


Flight

by Miraculous, RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blackmail, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Torture, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 17:31:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 76,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16497056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miraculous/pseuds/Miraculous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: A magical accident in the Time Room leaves Harry and Voldemort stranded in the past. Harry learns that nothing about the magical world in the 1940s is truly familiar, and Voldemort discovers there’s much more to Harry than he ever suspected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This craziness is the product of another irresistible prompt from Miraculous, which then became a collaboration, because Miraculous is a plot genius. Any flaws are due to the inadequate writing of RedHorse. We hope you enjoy it! Please note the changed tags and summary in light of the change in plans we’ve had with respect to the story’s direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Cybrid for the beta, all the structure and plot input, and an excellent writing lesson.

  
**Chapter 1.1**

**Temporal Instability Resulting from Magical Activity in the Presence of a Loop; or, Harry and Voldemort duel where they shouldn’t**  


****

Harry and Voldemort faced one another in the Time Room, while all around them the Order and the Death-Eaters engaged in a dozen individual and life-threatening skirmishes. Harry, paralyzed by the reality of nearly everyone who mattered to him being simultaneously at risk, didn’t even lift his wand until Voldemort had already raised his and fired the first spell. ****  
** **

Harry dodged it as though it was a punch, jerking to one side so that the lance of light passed him by a centimeter from his jaw. It struck one of the spinning clocks in a shower of smoke and sparks, but Harry didn’t pause again. He widened his stance and cast a shield, then three stinging hexes in an upward arch so they bounded over the shield’s uppermost perimeter and fell on Voldemort like rain. ****  
** **

“Parlor tricks, Harry?” Voldemort snarled, but his eyes were bright with interest. Harry had noticed this: how Voldemort relished a duel. He disintegrated Harry’s shield with his next spell, a curse which turned the barrier momentarily opaque before it shattered with a sound like breaking glass. Harry took advantage of the visual screen and rolled behind the cabinet he’d been crouched beside. ****  
** **

It left nothing but six feet of space between Harry and the curious bell jar where the hummingbird hatched and flew and hatched again in its infinite loop. The hair on the back of Harry’s neck stood on end. ****  
** **

The others were forced back by the might of Voldemort’s scattered magic, and though Harry heard a high voice cry his name, he couldn’t afford the distraction. He held his breath and stared at the point beyond his narrow refuge. He didn’t think he would hear Voldemort coming — the advantage of those bare feet. Just behind him the wind stirred in the bell jar, and on the cabinet before him, baskets full of pocket watches ticked in an unsynchronized cacophony.  ****  
** **

“Harry,” said Voldemort. “I know you’re there. Come _out_ .” The last word was a hiss, and Harry felt a moment of fierce pain in his scar. ****  
** **

He lifted his wand just as Voldemort swung around the edge of the cabinet with his wand pointed, looming over Harry with a terrible smile. They cast simultaneously. ****  
** **

It was not _Priori Incantatem_ , because Voldemort was not bearing his yew wand. But their spells -- Voldemort’s wordless and its energy deep grey, Harry’s an instinctive, shamefully juvenile _Expelliarmus_ and bright red -- met and glanced off one another as though repelled. Voldemort’s spell hit the bell jar, and everything turned into a spinning, lightless void.

****

***

****

Voldemort had never studied time magic, largely because its experimentation was a leading cause of death in magical scholarship. But even without any expertise, he knew enough about the likely outcome of his spell bursting an aging time loop that the last words he spoke in 1995 were “Oh, no.”     ****  
** **

Time travel was even odder than he would have theorized. He was sucked down a narrow path of his own memories, fast and vibrant, a million impressions devolving from the cognizance of his most recent weeks to a distasteful montage of the years in Albania. A flash of his peak, powerful and feared and on the cusp of victory — snatched away again but this time in reverse. ****  
** **

He saw the Morsmordre bloom on the unmarred forearm of a trembling young man, the first he’d first marked. He heard the monsoon rain pound on the canvas tent he’d pitched when he explored the Brazilian forests. He smelled the tang of paint from the denigrating task of touching up the sign that hung over the entrance to Borgin and Burke’s.  ****  
** **

And then he was once again standing before Harry Potter in the Time Room. Except, where the bell jar had been there was nothing but an empty platform, and the only noises were their respective heaving breaths. Not a single clock ticked, and clearly neither Harry’s schoolmates nor Voldemort’s Death Eaters were present. ****  
** **

Harry was pale and shaking. If Voldemort’s mind had spun a reel of his own life since — what must this be? Before 1950 — what had Harry seen, drawn back at least 30 years before his birth? Could mind and body bear such a thing? ****  
** **

Was the boy dying? That would be convenient, since he was still cautious about using lethal magic on Harry, given their unique history. ****  
** **

Harry’s glasses were falling off his face, and without the smudged lenses his eyes shone spectacularly bright. His mother had looked very similar, angry tears refracting the light, her wand arm limp. ****  
** **

Voldemort raised his wand. “A cutting curse,” he told Harry. “Cast with enough strength, it is as humane as _Avada Kedavra_ .” ****  
** **

Harry grimaced and snatched his wand in a casting grip, and Voldemort incanted under his breath. He expected Harry to cast a shield — which wouldn’t be strong enough — or an offensive spell — which wouldn’t be fast enough — ****  
** **

But Harry cast something else. He held Voldemort’s eye as he did so. A steady eye contact, unbroken until Harry disappeared. Where he had been was a stamp of his silhouette in foggy white like the mist of a noncorporeal Patronus. ****  
** **

It wasn’t apparition. It was silent, and also apparition was impossible in the Department of Mysteries and most of the Ministry as a whole. It wasn’t a concealment, because Voldemort’s spell blasted through the space Harry had been, scattering the white mist, and tunneled eight inches into the stone wall beyond. ****  
** **

“Wands away!”  ****  
** **

Voldemort turned to incapacitate whoever had arrived. It was a ministry official, austere in grey. His wand hand trembled; he was obviously a scholar, not a soldier. Typical Unspeakable. ****  
** **

“You dare cast a Diffindo strong enough to cut someone in half at _a child_ ?”  ****  
** **

“Yes,” Voldemort said, too incensed for discretion. “I cast it at people who dare to be in my way. _Diffindo.”_ ****  
** **

Voldemort walked between the Unspeakable’s halves to reach the door. The still-hot blood was slick on the bottoms of his feet. In the corridor, another Unspeakable pressed himself against the wall. He looked at Voldemort with wide eyes. ****  
** **

“Do you come on behalf of the dark lord?” he murmured, cautiously making Grindelwald’s sign over his heart. ****  
** **

“No,” said Voldemort. “I _am_ the dark lord. My name is Voldemort.”

****

  
**Chapter 1.2**

**The Art of Alliance-Making and the Pain of Reciprocity; or, Voldemort visits an old friend**  


****

There was only one person to whom he would be able to prove his identity, and who was also sufficiently skeptical of the recognized limitations of magic to truly believe that his presence there was possible.  ****  
** **

She was where he’d left her, or would leave her, whatever the grammatical variant was for a situation the language didn’t contemplate. The cauldron bubbled where it hung on a limb in the garden over a crackling open fire. Beyond it, near the cottage door, she sat in her perpetually rocking chair, her unkempt, iron-grey curls standing out around her head. All she was missing was a wart, and she would have been the classic portrait of a Woodswoman, hunted to extinction and then amusingly depicted by children’s costumes, he’d noticed, the night he walked amongst the Muggles to eliminate Harry Potter. ****  
** **

“Hold there,” she advised as he approached the cottage. She rose from the chair, which naturally continued to rock just as energetically as it had when she sat in it. She shook back a ragged black sleeve and pointed her wand at him. Their eyes met. He’d recalled that one of hers was ordinary dull brown, and the other bright red, but the color was newly familiar to him now, after acquiring a passing familiarity with his own changed reflection. ****  
** **

“Good afternoon, Hilda,” said Voldemort. Her thin lips pursed and she closed the brown eye and looked at him with only the red one. Almost at once, her frown twisted into a smile, revealing one tooth that was sharper than the rest and jutted out over her lower lip. ****  
** **

“Tom,” she said, but because of her tooth it sounded more like _Thom_ . “It is you. What a delight.” She lowered her wand and opened her brown eye. “Want some tea?” ****  
** **

Hilda’s tea normally had a frog and some bits of filth floating in it, but Voldemort prided himself on his manners. ****  
** **

“Yes, thank you,” he said. ****  
** **

Inside the cottage, Hilda’s feral elf was eating something raw in the corner. It laid back its ears and growled at Voldemort like a dog with a bone, blood smeared on its bony fingers and sharp chin. ****  
** **

“Dug,” Hilda snapped. “Make the tea.” ****  
** **

The elf stopped growling and coughed up a small bone, which it tucked into its loin cloth before making its way over to the little wooden dry sink where the tea things were kept. There were no cupboards; the tea things, like everything else, were stored  in a haphazard pile that swayed slowly back and forth like a tree in the wind, though the air in the cottage was musty and still. Whatever version of housekeeping magic the feral elf employed was obviously all that kept it from toppling over. ****  
** **

Reminding himself that he’d never gotten a serious bacterial infection from having tea with Hilda, Voldemort held his breath and accepted the teacup, chipped and smudged with congealing blood,  that the elf presented to him. He gingerly took a sip. It was tepid and tasted sour, which was to say, not as bad as he’d expected. ****  
** **

“So, how is the future?” Hilda asked, tilting her own teacup back and forth so its contents sloshed noisily. ****  
** **

“Nothing like you might expect,” said Voldemort. ****  
** **

“It didn’t go very well for you, I see,” she mused, looking him up and down. “Do you miss your pretty face?” ****  
** **

Voldemort rolled his eyes. “No, I do not. Also, it went better for me than it did for _you_ . Apparently you had the gall to die before you could hold up your end of our arrangement.” ****  
** **

He was lashing out, he recognized. It wasn’t that he _missed_ his face, only that it had been an asset, and his present appearance -- in his present circumstances -- was a detriment. He’d never had wealth of the traditional sort, so the things of value within his control were precious to him. ****  
** **

His arrow missed its mark, however; Hilda seemed unconcerned by the revelation of her not-so-distant death. Voldemort was not particularly surprised, as Hilda had always scoffed at his pursuit of immortality. It was still decades before Voldemort would speed to the rendezvous point in Albania with the last of his bodily magic, only to find her cottage cold and empty, her body rotting on the little cot while the elf gnawed the flesh from the bones of her left forearm. But a dark woodswoman could easily live several centuries, and Hilda would not yet be two hundred years old at that future time. ****  
** **

“How did you activate the mechanism in the Ministry?” Hilda asked, and Voldemort frowned at her, touching his forehead absently. She snickered. ****  
** **

“No legilimency. I have my oath, after all.” ****  
** **

Ah, yes. No written spells. Woodswoman nonsense. Voldemort nodded politely. “Of course. May I ask how you know the circumstances of my arrival?” ****  
** **

“I saw it in the cauldron,” she said.  ****  
** **

Voldemort tried not to glare at her. It would be unmannerly. “And why did you think to look?” ****  
** **

“The bones rattled,” she said, as though it explained everything, and gestured carelessly over her shoulder where the curtain of animal bones, tied together with a thousand strands of human hair, hung in its place of honor over the fireplace. ****  
** **

“Hmm.” It explained something, anyway. “May I trouble you for a few supplies?” ****  
** **

“You mean barter-goods,” she snorted. “Take my painstaking work and exchange it for those worthless gold discs.” ****  
** **

“Galleons, yes,” Voldemort said calmly. “It would please me, and I would return the favor in due course.” ****  
** **

She was grumbling, but already going to the potions cabinet, as he’d known she would. She opened it without magic and dozens of murky vials tumbled out, then levitated a half inch before they hit the floor. She pawed through the pile a while, then held up a vial larger than the others and filled with a ruby-red liquid, the sight of which had Voldemort sitting up in his chair. ****  
** **

“Odin’s Blood?” ****  
** **

“Everyone has their specialty,” she said, with a brief, wide grin, and waggled her eyebrows. “Are you sure you are willing to be in my debt, Tom?” ****  
** **

Voldemort hesitated. “I’m not called Tom, now.” ****  
** **

“Oh yes, _Voldemort_ . I can’t possibly call you that.” She held the vial toward him. “Well? You haven’t answered my question.” ****  
** **

“I am willing,” Voldemort said, taking the vial. “You truly don’t have more questions?” ****  
** **

“Just one,” she said, and he prepared himself, knowing what it would be. “When did you create the last two Horcruxes?” ****  
** **

Or rather, he had thought he knew. Voldemort frowned. “Two?” ****  
** **

Hilda laughed, a rather pleasant sound, not at all the cackle that you were led to expect from hook-nosed Woodswomen in filthy, remote cottages. “Oh, what fun we’ll have. How long are you staying?” ****  
** **

It was a familiar question, and usually the answer had been “for the afternoon,” or “just another few minutes.” Voldemort had happily never spent the night under Hilda’s roof, and neither had Tom.  ****  
** **

“Perhaps a few days, while I orient myself,” he said slowly, looking around the single room. “And mind, I would be asking for your leave to...make myself at home.” ****  
** **

Hilda didn’t seem surprised, but her grin was wider. “Oh, to be sure. I’m a very magnanimous hostess, so long as my guests are magnanimous in return.” ****  
** **

Voldemort sighed. “Shall it be skin, then, or blood?” ****  
** **

She looked him over, then did it again with the brown eye closed. Her nostrils flared. “Bone of the father, was it?” ****  
** **

Voldemort sighed, running his sharp nails over his scalp, which was a pleasant sensation and therefore a new habit of his. “In the moment I was having at that time, it was a rather convenient visage,” he said. ****  
** **

“But not now. Shall I fix you?” ****  
** **

Voldemort snorted. “ _That_ , I’m certain I can’t afford.” ****  
** **

“I’ll take a pint of blood, and you can imbue the lake on the full moon.” ****  
** **

“For my board, or my body?” ****  
** **

“Both, if you keep the cauldron fed.” ****  
** **

Voldemort winced. “Fine.” ****  
** **

The air crackled between them with the force of their agreement, and Voldemort rolled his eyes. For being sworn nemeses, the Woodswomen and the Purebloods had an awful lot in common. Stingy and distrustful, the lot of them. He supposed, with amused surprise, that he was very much the product of all their influence also. Maybe he should consider revising his personality. ****  
** **

She was raising her eyebrow expectantly, so Voldemort set down his tea cup and extended his left arm, then looked away. It was out of habit more than anything. No longer did the sight of his own blood stir the panicked idea that he was vulnerable in some way. He had his Horcruxes. Surely if he was unshackled from this body, he would be drawn back by their tethering force, even if it meant traveling through time as well? ****  
** **

A pint of blood is significant to a body, and Voldemort had the slow pulse of a reptile, so when it was done he slumped back against his chair in a fit of mild dizziness. ****  
** **

He blamed that sensation for his words. “Am I mortal here, now? Will they work across this distance?” ****  
** **

“I wouldn’t know, as I have my oath,” muttered Hilda, “but I assume the issue is less that you’re mortal and more that you’re...subordinate.” ****  
** **

Voldemort forgot his disorientation at once and sat up with a jolt, her words far more powerful than an Evenerate. ****  
** **

“What?” He snapped, but this time he _did_ know what she would say. ****  
** **

“Your soul is the more fragmented, and his is the more whole. You’re Tom Riddle’s Horcrux, dear boy. Which reminds me, what shall I call you?” She wrinkled her nose. “Not _Voldemort_ , surely. Such a mouthful.”

****

  
**Chapter 1.3**

**The Midnight Rendezvous of the Knights of Walpurgis; or, Minnie eavesdrops.**  


****

Minnie opened the broom wardrobe carefully, avoiding the creaky board that had been her undoing before, and reached into the darkness therein, not daring to risk a _Lumos_ . Her fingertips skated over the knotty wood of one broom and then another. She knew the gritty sandalwood of her own Moonduster immediately. She took it out as slowly as her eagerness would permit, wincing when it knocked against the back of the cabinet. But no one else in the dormitory stirred. ****  
** **

She snuck out cautiously, broom tucked firmly under her arm, navigating the dark as easily as she had dozens of times before. Still, she felt a little thrill when she made it through the common room and jimmied open the window, then flew straight out of Gryffindor Tower into the blissful stillness of the sky at five minutes past midnight. ****  
** **

She leaned over the handle to pick up speed, guiding herself into the air above the forest where she ran the slightest risk of being seen. But just as she rose high enough that it would be easy to miss, she caught a flash of movement below her that drew her up short. ****  
** **

Minnie’s eyes narrowed. Below her were five people in cloaks, hoods lowered. Two had black hair, one light brown, one red. But the fifth was palest gold, even in the silver moonlight. Unmistakably Abraxas Malfoy. ****  
** **

She liked to think herself on relatively good terms with the Slytherins. The culture there was shifting, as everyone came to admire the Muggle-raised orphan Tom Riddle. But there was something in Malfoy’s face she was never going to be able to like, and while she yearned to leave what she’d seen behind her and unwind in a starlit flight as she’d planned, her Gryffindor spirit wouldn’t quite let her. ****  
** **

Spotting a clear place just inside the forest, she dropped to the ground between the trees, carefully stowed her broom in the crux of two low branches, and padded back out onto the Hogwarts grounds as a cat. ****  
** **

To her surprise, the first voice she heard was Tom Riddle’s. It drew her up short. He was just a fifth year, and Malfoy was a seventh year; she couldn’t recall seeing them interact. Though she supposed she didn’t pay all that much attention to Slytherin politics, which were exhausting and well beyond the grasp of a fourth-year Gryffindor. Also, Malfoy was coolly civil with everyone, but he was a _Malfoy_ . Everyone knew he only associated personally with Purebloods. ****  
** **

But what was more shocking than seeing Tom Riddle permitted in Malfoy’s orbit, was that it seemed to be the other way around. ****  
** **

“Speak, then, Malfoy,” said Riddle. ****  
** **

Malfoy did, with quiet deference. “My father says a boy arrived at the Ministry, in the Time Room.” ****  
** **

The Slytherins all stood in a half circle, near one another. The cat’s eyes, unfettered by the darkness, noted the glossy rune circle that kept their privacy from _human_ ears, but only made their voices a bit fuzzy for the cat’s. Still, she crept closer, blanketed by the dark but knowing she should be cautious nonetheless. ****  
** **

“A boy,” echoed Tom. ****  
** **

“Yes.” ****  
** **

The brown-haired boy jabbed Malfoy surreptitiously with the handle of his wand. It was one of the Nott triplets, whom Minnie couldn’t keep straight. ****  
** **

Malfoy cleared his throat. “yes, my Lord. They don’t know what to do with him, but he’s asked to be sent here, to Hogwarts.” ****  
** **

“I see.” Riddle’s face was oddly blank, not the handsome, soft-around-the-edges look Minnie was used to from the times she’d looked at him in the Great Hall. She didn’t have a great deal of interest in boys, but Riddle’s looks were a constant source of amusement for the other girls in her dormitory, and, she assumed, plenty of other girls -- and boys -- also. So it was easy for her to see that he was wearing a mask all the times she’d seen him before, or was wearing one now.  ****  
** **

Or, more likely, that he had at least two masks. ****  
** **

“Well done, Malfoy. You’ve told me nearly nothing, except that a boy exists and may one day attend our school. What a unique circumstance.” ****  
** **

Malfoy’s jaw steeled, but he didn’t speak. Minnie had a growing sense of foreboding as she wondered at the price of this degree of respect. Riddle was tapping his wand thoughtfully against his thigh, and the red-headed boy was watching it with a sort of mesmerized terror, openly sweating despite the coolness of the evening. ****  
** **

Minnie’s hackles had long since risen, and strained further at the charge of magic in the air when Riddle casually lifted his wand, pointed it at Malfoy’s forehead, and incanted “ _Legilimens_ .” ****  
** **

At the same moment, the Nott triplet happened to glance her way, and his beady eyes narrowed behind his thick-framed glasses. Minnie had no choice: she turned and sprinted away before she could be properly seen. ****  
** **

Back in the forest, Minnie picked up her broom with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. She didn’t want to know any of this, and at the same time, wondered how much she really knew. The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself the bone-deep terror she’d experienced wasn’t warranted. ****  
** **

They might be Slytherins, but they were just boys, after all. Who cared whether they traded Ministry gossip, or cast illegal spells upon one another? Who else were they harming? ****  
** **

She felt better, if still distracted, when she rose up into the air, thinking wryly that’s where she ought to have stayed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miraculous for an immensely valuable beta read!

  
**Chapter 2.1**

**  
**

**Violence is the Foulest Consequence of Ambition; or, Dumbledore is at war**

Albus was standing on the conjured parapet above the battlefield with Ariadne, listening to her mumble about the foolhardiness of Muggles, and wincing every time one of the artillery burst and a few more men staggered and died.

“This is how they do it?” Albus hadn’t been shocked in many years, but this shocked him. Men gunning one another down like animals, pitilessly, dying in mud made of dirt and blood.

“They’re always changing their ways,” said Ariadne, who had the crumpled face and hunched posture to prove her two hundred and five years. She was the oldest witch Dumbledore had ever heard of, let alone known, and she was the closest thing to a mentor he had. “They used to cut each other with swords and knives, which was better in some ways and worse in others. These shooting tools they use kill more easily, but being cut apart is a very gruesome and slow way to go.”

The parapet drifted like a cloud, and Ariadne had to pause to steer it back to the center of the action. Albus rather wished she would just let it take them elsewhere.

“Wizards have often masked their machinations in Muggle conflicts, but this Grindelwald has his own, novel style.”

Hearing his name was an arrow in Albus’s heart, and he supposed it always would be. Their boyhood was well behind them, but maybe no one ever really evolved. Maybe he would always be that ambitious, curious boy, who looked at Gellert Grindelwald and noticed his brilliance before his darkness.

“There,” Ariadne said suddenly, pointing down with her wand and casting the magnifying charm. A shimmering sphere opened in the air and let them see the whites of the eyes of the men within its range. One of them had pale hair beneath his officer’s cap, and the glimmer of a shield charm was just detectable over his skin. At that opportune moment, they were able to watch a bullet bounce off his cheek, while he didn’t so much as flinch.

“Is that our dark lord?” Ariadne looked at Albus for confirmation.

“That is Gellert,” he said softly, watching the gleam in Gellert’s eyes as he strode among the battling Muggles, clearly intent not on the foot soldiers but an officer, crying encouragement to his men from deeper in the fray. 

“Well, we aren’t surprised,” Ariadne said crisply, as though she couldn’t insinuate a tremendous amount of personal information from Albus’s troubled frown and shaky voice. She patted his arm with uncharacteristic warmth.

“We aren’t surprised, but nor are we pleased.” 

Ariadne often used the first-person plural. As far as Albus knew she was only talking about herself, though she had a dry, frequent joke when she was called on it, wherein she said: “I mean me, of course, and the Horcrux in my pocket.” Most people didn’t know what she meant, and some went pale with horror, and some laughed disproportionately hard, in Albus’s opinion, to the quality of the joke. 

At last, Ariadne steered the parapet away from the fighting and toward the camp. The camp housed Ariadne, Albus and a few elite Aurors, and was positioned on a sheer cliffside where there was an entrance to a small cave, virtually inaccessible to Muggles. There, they had cast what were probably far too many expansion spells, but hadn’t caused a cave-in yet. 

They stepped off the parapet and Ariadne anchored it with a bit of charmed rope to the cliffside, then they entered the cave which was spelled brightly as a sunlit day, less dreary than the outdoors. Albus felt relieved as soon as they were inside. He didn’t want to force his culture and values on the Muggles, but he had moments where he was emotionally exhausted by the mere thought of them, and their incomprehensibly destructive tendencies.

“Albus?” Ariadne said sharply. Albus turned, and found that she was still standing just on the cliffside, not quite inside the corridor, and between them was a boy. A boy who was breathing heavily, wearing torn robes, and looked like he was about to be ill. He had messy hair, sharp, freckled cheekbones, and an uncanny resemblance to Fleamont Potter.

“P-p-professor?” he said, and promptly fainted. Albus was too busy staring to react, but Ariadne neatly cast a cushioning charm so the child didn’t brain himself as he fell backward onto the stone floor. 

Ariadne looked at Albus. By the way one of her eyes seemed wider than the other, Albus thought she was raising an eyebrow at him, but the gesture was lost in the deep crags of her face. 

“I assure you, this young man and I haven’t met.” He came closer and peered concernedly at the boy while Ariadne cast a diagnostic spell which at least confirmed that there was nothing terribly wrong with him, except shock and extreme magical exhaustion.

“Well, let’s get him to the secure room and wake him up.” Ariadne was never discomposed, and even the appearance of a teenage boy in their supposed-to-be secret war headquarters wasn’t ruffling her fathers. She levitated him ahead of her and followed his floating body in her slow and shuffling manner.

When the boy woke up, he sat up and patted his pockets. “Where is my wand?”

It was not the typical, groggy demeanor of someone just roused from unconsciousness. Albus and Ariadne exchanged a look. The Aurors would be back soon, and Albus was wondering if they should have waited to interrogate the child until then. But, he couldn’t resign himself to it being an interrogation. The boy was only a child, younger than many of his students.

“We are keeping it for now,” said Albus solemnly, when a quick glance at Ariadne communicated that he should be the one to speak. “Tell me, child, how did you come to be here with us?”

“A spell,” said the boy. “ _Expecto Deliverum_.” 

Albus’s eyes widened. “You cast _Expecto Deliverum_?” he echoed, trying to be kind, but quite skeptical. “That’s one of the _Twelve Great Spells_.”

Ariadne reached out and touched the tip of her wand to the boy’s forehead, closed her eyes and muttered a spell that was quite dark and which Albus, therefore, pretended not to overhear, then holstered her wand and put a hand on her hip.

“It’s possible,” she said. 

“You could check my wand,” said the boy.

“Check your wand,” Ariadne echoed.

“For the last spells it cast. _Priori Incantatem_.” 

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Albus. He wondered if the child was a very bad mole, mad, or still disorientated.

“You’re younger,” the boy said, looking at Albus carefully, as though fascinated. 

“Have we met, my boy?” Albus asked. He knew they hadn’t. Albus never forgot a face, and this child was not Fleamont Potter’s cousin or his nephew, the only Potters in this boy’s demographic. He might be illegitimate, or it could merely be a coincidence, though it would be uncanny.

“Yes. You’re Headmaster Dumbledore.”

Again, either the boy’s information was very bad or he was not good at his appointed task. Or he was mad. With the latter possibility in mind, Albus tried to remain patient.

“I’m _Professor_ Dumbledore,” he corrected. “What is your name?”

“Harry,” said the boy, then, perhaps seeing that Albus didn’t react to the name, he added “Potter.”

“Harry Potter,” Albus repeated. “No, I’m sure we haven’t met, though I had the pleasure of teaching Fleamont Potter - is he a relative?”

Harry looked swiftly at Ariadne and hesitated.

“Please, you may trust Ariadne as implicitly as you trust me.” He did appear to trust Albus, puzzlingly.

“Fleamont Potter is my grandfather,” said Harry. “And there was an...accident in the Time Room, at the Department of Mysteries. And now I’m here, and it’s...earlier.” The boy swallowed. “It’s earlier than it was, and I don’t know how much earlier.” He looked over Albus’s face intensely, looking increasingly unnerved. “Maybe a lot.”

Ariadne made a small noise and elbowed past Albus again to press the wand tip against the child’s forehead a second time. Harry did not protest, only waited quietly under her wand. Ariadne did not incant. Albus watched her silently until she pulled back.

“He was born under a strange sky,” she said. Albus stared at her for a long, confused moment. But she was a Black, after all; even if the family had long since disowned her, it didn’t change her affinity for the stars.

“What year do you come from, Harry?” Albus asked softly. He wanted to believe more than he should. There was something compelling about the way the boy looked at him.

“1995,” said the boy. “Is it...is it much earlier than that?”

Albus blinked. “It’s 1943.”

Harry sagged back against the pillows. “I worried you might say something like that.”

 

  
**Chapter 2.2**

****

****

**In a Structured and Rigid Environment the Child May Wilt or Blossom Dependent Upon his Basic Nature; or, Harry spends time with grown ups.**

 

Harry lay awake on July 31, 1943, wondering if he was sixteen or negative fifty-seven.

On the one hand, his body was definitely older. It had changed even in the several weeks since his arrival. He’d grown an inch and filled out a bit, too, which was the opposite of what usually happened in the summers.

On the other hand, he wasn’t born yet. A paradox.

Actually, it wasn’t a paradox, and Ariadne would scowl and lecture him if she heard him say so. But Ariadne was off with the Aurors, Harry recalled regretfully. He’d liked her very much. She practiced magic in a way he’d not known was possible, spoke with a deep accent that he couldn’t place. She believed him before anyone else. She’d taught him three wordless curses when Professor Dumbledore reluctantly left them alone together, yet she was an attentive student herself when Harry clumsily taught her what he knew of _Priori Incantatem_.

She bid him farewell without fanfare, though the corners of her mouth did turn down, deepening the lines there, and she put one smooth hand on his cheek when their eyes met.

“Careful out there, boy,” she’d said softly, and Harry had thought he understood the way people normally felt about their grandparents. It was evident that she cared; a vigorous but pleasant energy emanated from her and caught him up in its warmth.

Today Professor Dumbledore was taking Harry to Godric’s Hollow and leaving him with Mary Potter.

The announcement had come as a surprise to Harry for at least two reasons. First, he hadn’t dreamed he would meet any of his relatives. It seemed like a sure way to corrupt time. And second, it meant that Professor Dumbledore believed Harry’s story of where he came from and what happened in the Time Room, which Harry hadn’t been sure of despite the Professor’s kind attitude. And the third, vaguer thought that accompanied the more prominent two was that if Harry was being sent away from Professor Dumbledore’s sphere of supervision, it must mean that something significant was about to happen with the war.

Harry rolled out of his little bed in the chamber they called the secure room, which he’d realized after a day or so was meant to be a holding cell. He pulled on the shirt, trousers and leather shoes he’d been provided so he could stop frightening the Aurors with his jeans and trainers every time they changed rotation. He felt the open wards ghost over his face and arms when he left the chamber.

Professor Dumbledore was in the little kitchen where elves wearing tiny, tailored uniforms with the Hogwarts emblem brought food several times per day. Preservation charms and expansion charms, Professor Dumbledore had explained once to Harry, did not combine well, so they had no way of keeping food on hand.

“Couldn’t you use an ice box? Or have all canned stuff, like the Muggles?” Harry supposed the modern appliances in the Dursley kitchen weren’t around in 1942, but Muggles had certainly been subsisting on stored food for much longer than that.

Professor Dumbledore looked intensely curious. “Ice box?” he echoed carefully. Harry considered explaining, then shrugged.

“I suppose I shouldn’t try to explain what happens in the future, anyway.” Ariadne had been very clear about that, though she had said several times, with a narrow-eyed stare, that it was _specific people_ whose destinies Harry wasn’t to go about discussing. He occasionally regretted letting her put her wand tip on his forehead so often, but her impersonal, curious presence in his mind was so unobtrusive as to be almost welcome. He liked the idea that as she saw more of Harry’s inner self, she seemed to like him more.

Harry was the first one to the kitchen, and settled himself at the little table there that appeared to be designed for one, which must mean someone had transfigured it, because the last time he’d sat there it had been with nine Aurors, and it was spacious enough their elbows weren’t at risk of knocking one another.

Professor Dumbledore strolled in, wearing gold-spangled light blue robes that would have looked like pajamas on anyone else, but which he made look sort of casually elegant. He smiled at Harry and the table abruptly doubled in size. Seeing Harry’s startled expression, Professor Dumbledore waved a hand at the teapot so it would pour out and explained.

“Like most furniture designed for camping, the table will grow if someone arrives in the room and wishes to sit.”

Harry nodded, interested in how that kind of magic would work. “So the table knows your wishes?” The thought made him smile, then frown apprehensively. A telepathic table seemed a bit much, even by wizarding standards.

Professor Dumbledore was unbothered. “A bit of sentience is convenient in furniture,” he said, sitting down across from Harry. “But actually, it’s the wards that know our intentions, and the table is linked to the wards.”

Harry was truly stunned at that, but the conversation was briefly paused by the arrival of an elf with a heaping platter of scrambled eggs, which it set in front of Harry before disapparating again. “The wards know what?”

“Our intentions,” said Professor Dumbledore, who was exactly as patient with Harry’s ignorance as he would be in fifty-odd years when they met for Harry’s first time. “How do you think the wards knew to allow you in, when _Expecto Deliverum_ brought you to me?”

Harry nodded, though he was still baffled, and poked at the plate of scrambled eggs. He recalled a question he’d been meaning to ask. “What’s Mary Potter like?” All Harry knew was that she was his great-aunt, she wouldn’t go on to have children, and as Fleamont’s elder sister, she had been set to inherit before she predeceased their parents.

“She was a young lady then,” said Professor Dumbledore, “and I admit I haven’t seen her since. Fleamont puts me in mind of you, though, Harry,” he added, “and I imagine you’ll all get on sportingly. I’d send you to Fleamont if it were an option, but…”

Harry nodded. Professor Dumbledore had already explained that Fleamont was a bit of a rogue, and not a candidate for Harry’s caregiver. 

“You’ll go to Hogwarts on September first,” said Professor Dumbledore, “so you won’t be there long, should you find Mary’s home...oppressive.”

Harry thought of the Dursleys and grimaced. Nothing could be more oppressive than _that_. Misinterpreting his frown, Professor Dumbledore reached out and patted Harry’s arm. “We can bear anything for a short while, and Lady Potter is a fine, light witch.”

This was a phrase Harry hadn’t heard before, but he didn’t feel up to interrogating Professor Dumbledore so early in the morning, and with so many eggs still uneaten.

***

Harry realized it was probably odd he had never been to Godric’s Hollow. He’d known about it long enough. But during the school year there weren’t opportunities for lengthy holidays, and in the summer it wasn’t exactly a day trip he could suggest to the Dursleys. 

The village was lovely, and quite reminiscent of Hogsmeade. Harry supposed all of wizarding Britain was sufficiently alike in its culture that that would be the case. They had to Apparate in.

“Godric’s Hollow still declines the Floo network,” said Professor Dumbledore conversationally as they strolled down a tidy cobbled street lined with shops, most of which were either just opening or still closed at the early hour. “An old-fashioned sort, the Potters, and in this village everyone does as they do. Come along, Harry, this way.”

Harry had spent much of his time beneath the Dursleys’ roof imagining life with his parents instead. As a young child, it had been just Harry, his mother and father in these daydreams. Skeptical even then about his aunt and uncle’s claims about their character, Harry had imagined them as sweet and fun-loving, though blurry around the edges. It was a version of what he observed between the Dursleys: two parents who loved their child. Except in Harry’s imagination, there was less bribery on the parents’ part and more reciprocation of affection on the child’s part..

Then he met the Weasleys, and his vision of the family he could have had morphed into something louder and more boisterous, and a half-dozen siblings without faces but with his same messy hair.

He could safely say he had not imagined the big, stately house, or the uniformed staff-member who opened the door. 

“Ah, good morning,” said Professor Dumbledore politely to the woman, while Harry nervously inspected the seamless white marble slab that paved the entryway. “I have an appointment with your mistress.”

“You do,” she agreed, and she sighed as though she had personally advised against it. Her uniform was crisp and her blond hair was gathered in a sleek ponytail, which wasn’t a style Harry thought typical of the times, but what did he know? She had light blue eyes and a focused gaze that Harry thought were what someone had in mind the first time they used the words “icy stare.” In the future, everyone would either greet Professor Dumbledore with magnanimity or contempt, so seeing his presence treated as unremarkable was still an adjustment for Harry.

“Follow me,” said the woman, turning and walking into the house, and Professor Dumbledore and Harry followed her into an antechamber at least twice the size it should be based upon the house’s architecture. Harry, accustomed by now to wizarding disregard for the constraints of physics, tried not to think about it. 

“And what is your name, miss?” Professor Dumbledore asked the woman. She looked over her shoulder at him and her expression thawed, if only slightly and only for a moment.

“Marissa,” she said. “Here you are, my mistress is in the Tapestry Room.” She opened a door and stood aside so they could precede her.

Harry was relieved when Professor Dumbledore was willing to go in first. Following behind him, Harry couldn’t take in the entire room at once, but he saw that it was long, narrow, and well-named. Its every wall was coated in tapestries of various sizes, with scenes of hunts and revelry and domesticity and war, the embroidered figures as animated as those in a portrait. 

It was a bit disorienting, actually, and also distracted Harry altogether from the woman sitting by an open fire.

Harry had never seen a fire pit indoors, let alone in the middle of a room. But the fire that burned was magical; it produced no heat or smoke, so Harry supposed a chimney really was optional. 

“Good morning, Ms. Potter. Ah, a Watch-Fire, how exciting. This is Harry, your great-nephew, as promised.” Professor Dumbledore turned with a flourish, revealing Harry, who had previously only been peering around his elbow. 

Mary Potter was older than Harry had expected her to be. She had dark grey curls, eyes approximately the same color, and severe black eyebrows in an otherwise pale face.

“Harry, yes,” she said, standing up slowly and smoothing the cream-colored skirt she wore beneath a fitted black blouse with a high collar and gauzy sleeves. Harry felt quite shabby in contrast, and was very grateful that he wasn’t still wearing just jeans and trainers. “The wards recognize him. How curious.”

She seemed more at ease with the situation than Harry had anticipated, and his tense shoulders relaxed a bit.

“You’re the spitting image of my little brother,” she said. “Isn’t he, Albus?”

“Yes,” agreed Professor Dumbledore, who had wandered nearer to Mary in order to peer into the Watch-Fire. 

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Harry said, summoning what he recalled of his manners, and Mary Potter smiled suddenly in a way that Harry chose to interpret as amused rather than condescending.

“‘Very nice,’ is it?” She laughed. “Is this how Muggles speak?”

Professor Dumbledore turned abruptly from the fire with the beginnings of a distressed expression, but Harry wasn’t offended and that must have been obvious, because he relaxed in the next moment.

Still, he spoke to Mary in a mildly censorious tone. “We wouldn’t be the light side if we didn’t strive toward acceptance.”

Mary Potter nodded, eyes widening. “I don’t mean anything _negative_ by it, of course. Only that it’s so curious to see a wizard with no knowledge of our most basic customs.Please, sit,” said Mary Potter. “I’m afraid I can’t waste the fire, but we can have tea afterwards.”

Marissa conjured two chairs for them across the fire from Mary, and they all sat. Harry recalled the elves popping in and out of the cave the past several days, and wondered how common it was in this time. Not that everyone had elves in the 90s - he imagined an elf in Molly Weasley’s kitchen and stifled a laugh - but he’d never heard of a human magical house staff.

Harry badly wanted to know what a Watch-Fire was, but didn’t feel he could ask. In fact, despite how sure he’d been that he would feel at ease with his family, true to some instinct or a bone-deep recognition, he felt extremely awkward sitting in this big house with aloof Mary Potter. 

“Ah, here,” Mary Potter said suddenly, leaning toward the fire. “This is what it means to show me,” she added in a murmur, her eyes growing glassy and unfocused.

Harry looked from Mary to the column of fire between them, which was taller than any natural flame, rippling and sparking, magic burning. And as he looked into its shifting colors and pattern, it blurred and then changed shape.

A clear image of Voldemort’s face appeared, the bright red of his eyes an echo of the fire that had conjured him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3.0**

**  
**

**What Has Been Surrendered to the Water May be Retrieved in Due Course; or, Voldemort goes into the lake**

Voldemort created a tent from his cloak with the old Arabic spells. He wasn’t ready to present himself in public and sell the Odin’s Blood. Therefore, in order to harness sufficient latent energy to cast the expansion and stability charms adequately, he’d also had to borrow Hilda’s prized star mare. Which was the full skeleton of a desert-born mare, killed beneath the full moon. It had cost him another pint of blood. 

But the bones were powerful, and made the casting easy. When he returned them in their oil-cloth bag, he asked, “What moon was it?”

Hilda looked at him with a grin. She seemed to have no greater joy than in having information someone wanted and deliberating whether to be generous or jealous with it.

“It was the phase I was born under, and if you believe in all of that, it means they have gained power in my ownership.”

" _If_ I believe?” Voldemort echoed. “So you expect me to believe you’re not trying to teach me something right now?” 

“I’m always teaching you something, but you have much more to learn than mere magic.”

Voldemort gritted his teeth. He detested few things as much as a flippant attitude about magic. But she was old and mad, he reminded himself. And by 1981, she would have been stupid enough to get herself killed before she could build him the body he’d bargained for and install his untethered soul inside it.

So Voldemort spent a few days in his tent, leaving occasionally to take tea with Hilda, and transfiguring sticks and rocks into furniture. He didn’t have an eye for decoration. To his dubious amusement, everything wound up looking like something one would find in the Slytherin common room.

And at night, he dreamt vividly of Harry Potter.

Something happened in the interstitial journey. Where once he’d been aware of a connection, and flashes of exchanged information, they had seemed to travel more in one direction than the other. Now it seemed that he saw the boy, and the boy didn’t see him. It might have been that Voldemort hadn’t had moments of intense anger or shock since his arrival in the past. (If it wasn’t such a setback, the respite from being at war might have come as something of a relief.)

He blamed it on having so little to do, but Voldemort looked in on Harry often. It became almost second nature to close his eyes and spend a moment peering through the boy’s at a scene that was invariably a stark contrast to Voldemort’s. Aurors gathered at a long table discussing the Muggle war; a wizened old witch Tom remembered as the substitute DADA professor explaining rune balance and blood-based potions infusing; Dumbledore, again and again, growing increasingly warm toward the boy. Of course.

Tom also dreamt of himself at this age — or rather, he felt he occupied his own mind at the age his younger self was, sixteen, his head a riot of anger and plans, repressed into the pit of his stomach while he outwardly filtered every action and word to improve his standing in Slytherin. In these dreams Tom was privy to all those familiar, detailed promises to himself of what he’d do in the future. He wondered if this was a dream, born of being thrown back to his past and all its reminders, or whether it was an effect of being a Horcrux — if Hilda could be believed.

He knew it was the beginning of the school holiday because Tom Riddle showed up at the boundary of Hilda’s wards, and she declined him.

“You never did that before,” he said when she came back in the cabin with a thoughtful frown on her face.

“Certainly I did. Or you would have found me sooner.” Tom had roamed the woods looking for her for the better part of his twelfth summer, and only near the end had he finally come upon the clearing. After that, however, he’d followed the tree marks and been swiftly delivered to her home every time he sought it out.

“You know what I mean.”

She shrugged. “I suppose you’re thinking of the timeline.”

“Yes.”

“Time magic should never have been written down.”

“I didn’t know you had an interest.”

“A dozen times they’ve come for the Woodswomen, and the first eleven times a loop saved us.” She smiled in the distant, unfocused way of someone recalling a fond memory. “Muggles with their torches walking through the forest, scared out of their wits and wondering at their sanity, for all eternity.”

Voldemort could not criticize someone for indulging in arguably unnecessary theatrics.

“Why not just kill them? You love having copious amounts of blood to dump in that lake,” Voldemort reminded her, thinking with a faint shudder of his own promise.

“The Woodswomen do not war,” she said sharply. Voldemort has heard of this rule, and it perplexed him. Before he could inquire, she lifted a hand the way she did to signal a subject was closed, but he wasn’t Tom. She wasn’t the only adult in the room.

“Is that how you die, then, I wonder?”

She gave him a thoughtful, chilly glare, and went back to her Potions cabinet. Voldemort went in his tent.

****

Voldemort dreamed of the darkness, that well of thoughts that had been waiting for him almost every night. There was someone with him, but the language was strange. No voices, but he knew what was being said. Was he reading a letter?

****

“I wonder if my younger self will kill Harry Potter. Certainly Harry Potter will try to kill him.”

He was gazing contemplatively into the Watch Fire, and Hilda leaned forward, frowning, as though she’d missed something in the flames.

“They don’t say,” she observed with a small sound, and glared at Voldemort. “The water is the best indicator anyway.”

“Interesting to hear that opinion, considering how much time you spend looking at your fire.”

“Don’t be grumpy,” Hilda said, amused. “You knew your bargain, and if you want to unmake it, you may return the Odin’s Blood.”

Voldemort lifted his chin. “No.” But he wondered what kind of body would really be worth the lake.

He’d done it once before, the weekend after he met Hilda. He was only a child then, or as much of a child as he’d ever been, and the water was unnaturally warm, even for summer. In the moonlight, Hilda had been terrifying, but he’d walked straight-backed and shivering, as though it was cold air striking his skin instead of the velvety heat of a humid midsummer.

Voldemort shook off the memory. The dreams were beginning to affect him. To clear his head, he closed his eyes to check on Harry.

_ Someone was measuring him for robes. Harry felt nostalgic, then worried, and then grimly amused when the servant who was with him looked at his inseam and waggled her pale blond eyebrows. _

_ There were two servant girls in Mary Potter’s House, as  fair as a couple of bastard Malfoys. It wouldn’t surprise Voldemort if they were exactly that. When Malfoys had girls, Abraxas had once told him, they dropped them at an orphanage and claimed stillbirth. _

_ “What do you think they’ll serve for the last course?” asked the servant girl as they walked back out of the shop.  _

_ Harry looked at her curiously. He’d developed a bit of a rapport with the younger girl, despite how miserably uncomfortable he obviously was with the power imbalance. _

_ “Pudding?” _

_ “No, the  _ last _ course.” She seemed to notice he was staring blankly, and laughed. “The flower course.” _

_ Harry thought she might be trying to trick him. He could never be sure with Marissa and Adelaide. _

_ Because everything Harry thought showed on his face, Adelaide laughed prettily. Voldemort, who had never understood the pursuit of women, recognized that Harry was tentatively attracted to her, but the memory of that little Ravenclaw was an impediment for him. It astounded Voldemort that a single awkward event over a year before could be standing in a teenage boy’s way on this subject. But from what he’d seen, wizarding culture was practically Puritan in the 1990s. _

_ “Well, anyway. I hope you’ll tell me about it after you go.” _

_ “Potter! I say, Potter!”  _

_ A portly gentleman in a bowler hat was rushing toward them, his quill and parchment sweeping along behind him, leaving his hands free to wave for Harry’s attention. _

_ “Oi, rather fast, aren’t you?” The man leaned against his knees and wheezed a bit. Harry and Adelaide exchanged a look. _

_ “I’m sorry, do I know you?” _

_ It was a ridiculous question, of course. Voldemort wanted to sigh or roll his eyes, but he knew focusing on the physical would yank him back to his own present, away from Harry. Which Voldemort supposed, now that he thought of it, was really the responsible thing to do for now anyway… _

_ But he should know if the boy was making new alliances. _

_ “Bernard Youngtree,” explained the man. Harry didn’t recognize his name, of course. And naturally, Voldemort did. _

Hilda’s fire was putting off an oily, eye-stinging smoke, which made Voldemort gasp, cough, and return to his own perspective. He staggered to his feet then away from the fire, joining Hilda a short distance away and scowling at her.

“You could have roused me,” he rasped, but she was looking around the clearing with the nearest thing to fear he’d ever seen on face.

“Draw your wand, boy,” she murmured. “There’s a hunting party coming.”

****

It didn’t shock Voldemort that someone would come try to kill Hilda. He knew that defending her clearing was the precarious war in which each Woodswoman spent her life. But her wards held, and the would-be attackers merely bounced off of them a few hours then dispersed when they at last lost energy.

He shouldn’t have stayed. When he was younger, he’d always apparated away at the first sign of a threat to someone else that didn’t extend imminently to Tom also.

But where could he go? The Odin’s Blood was in the tent and the tent was in the cottage. Only Hilda could be relied upon for the body. He’d brave the lake and that could be all he saw of her for the rest of his days if he chose.

****

The darkness, the swirling thoughts. He was reading and writing, he was sure now, by the quality of the communication. In these dreams he began to feel trapped, and often woke thinking of the lake.

****

On the night of the full moon, Voldemort stripped naked and gave himself a critical look in a conjured mirror. Behind him, all the conjured furniture was made invisible, loyal to the magical rule that nothing conjured should cast reflection or shade, so it appeared as though he stood suspended in a dark abyss.

It wasn’t traditional vanity that made him displeased by what he saw. There was something that appealed to him about every abnormality. As a child, when he’d first read of Salazar Slytherin, he had imagined a figure, tall and supernatural, with no need of physical strength, imbued instead with the magic of men and serpents alike. But this particular visage wasn’t of Voldemort’s design.

It was curious to wonder what had made him rise from the cauldron looking as he did. He had thought all through the ritual of who would fear him when he had a true body once more, and not the husk, made of and fed by snake venom, that Wormtail had crudely configured as his temporary shell.

He had the appearance primarily of bones and sinew, a man’s form, except with nothing to spare. Only the eyes were truly serpentine: the face was a skull and skin without benefit of cartilage or softness. And then, weren’t they the eyes of other reptiles - cats, perhaps marsupials. They were a hunter’s eyes, and he’d made darkness his home and cloak for so long, perhaps he had changed himself more elementally into a creature of the night.

But lately the darkness had made him uneasy: he thought of the nightmare when he preferred the escape of seeing the daylit world through Harry’s eyes. 

In the daylight he would look sallow and weak, he thought. Skin that seemed to softly glow with translucence in the conjured mirror, backlit by blackness, would seem fragile and sickly under the sun.

Voldemort put on his robes and left the tent, then the cabin. Hilda was waiting with her elf, which she was feeding something that closely resembled human fingers while it bounced around her knees like an excitable crup.

“Here,” she said, tossing him an object so quickly he fumbled to catch it without thinking through the potential danger of accepting anything from Hilda without careful inspection.

It was only a stone, perhaps an opal, smooth but irregular in its shape, foggy and unpolished. He remembered clutching it in his hand at twelve, plunged deep beneath the lake, and wondering if he would die.

He followed Hilda, noting she wore her bone curtain over her shoulders like a cloak. It rattled as she walked, and the moon lit the pieces dull yellow. The elf was trying to lick something off her boot, but as she walked on heedlessly, it grew frustrated and growled until she swiftly kicked its backside in reprimand.

Voldemort remembered the final dynamic between the two and felt a grim sort of amusement. It was easy to forget what elves were intended for by nature and magic, before they were bound to families and buildings and domestic tasks in a perversion of symbiosis. Voldemort didn’t pity anyone, including elves, but they symbolized a cultural defect in wizarding society that made him itch.

Then they came to the lake.

It glimmered a placid silver in the moonlight, stretching out beyond the trees in a scene that many would think peaceful. Voldemort looked at Hilda and held out his arms. She just watched him, her red eye glittering and the other reflecting the moonlight as brightly as the surface of the water. She opened her hand, revealing a small knife.

“You aren’t a child now. I shouldn’t have to do everything for you.”

Voldemort swallowed and blinked at the dull, jagged edge of the blade. He remembered it had taken some effort for her to cut him before. Hides were always tougher than they looked.

He took it and waded into the water before he could change his mind. The hand that didn’t hold the knife clutched the stone.

The water was colder than it had any right to be. When it was thigh deep, Voldemort sucked in a breath and plunged the knife deeply into one wrist and then the other, dragging it down in two firm, agonizing strokes.

Then he waded deeper into the water until the cuts were submerged and the moonlight seemed to turn faintly red, as though tainted in the same manner as the water.

He’d cut deeply enough that he was soon light-headed, though the water had an inexplicable numbing effect. He lay back to float on the surface, and inadvertently shed the cloak. All he held then was the stone and the knife, which bit into his numb palm, and he remembered this, also. Bleeding to death in the water could be calming. The lake would swallow him whole if he let it.

Voldemort almost panicked just as the water began to take from him in earnest. Last time, he’d nearly drowned when he fought the lake, but this time he didn’t struggle. He relaxed and watched the stars swirling overhead, thinking of time travel, thinking of…

He closed his eyes and saw Harry. It was disorienting, until he realized that Harry was looking in a mirror. He stood in a grand, dark room that was probably the bed chamber at the Potter house. What had possessed him, Voldemort wondered, to shed his clothes and stand before a mirror? Had he the impression of Voldemort doing so, courtesy of their inexplicable connection? Harry was almost as scrawny as Voldemort, but he was fully human. Juvenile but with the promise of adulthood written in the graceful curve of his shoulder and the angle of his cheek. 

It alarmed Voldemort to be admiring the physical aesthetics of a child, not because he had scruples in that regard, but because he detested children, as a rule. Even as a child himself, he’d detested his peers. He tried to draw back from Harry’s mind, but when he did he was in the lake, bleeding, while the lake pulsed with a hungry energy, and panic threatened again --

_ Harry was putting his clothes back on, and looking around the room instead of immersed in a study of into the mirror. He touched his forehead. Beneath his fingertips, he could feel the ridges of the scar, which hadn’t pained him since the Time Room. And then he felt nothing at all. _

_ Stunned, he jerked his head back up to look in the mirror, and leaned closer. Sure enough, the scar had disappeared. “A dream,” Harry hissed, but his heart was pounding with some combination of excitement and dread. Neither Harry nor Voldemort could parse Harry’s emotions. _

All Voldemort could think was that somewhere, Tom Riddle was dead. Or for some reason, Tom Riddle would not become Voldemort, and then leave that scar on Harry Potter’s face. Which _had_ to mean that he, Voldemort, would disappear or change as well —

_ But then the scar appeared again, and Harry blinked, touching it again. “I’m not dreaming,” he said aloud, and suddenly met his own eye in the mirror. _

_ “Where are you?” Harry murmured, and Voldemort realized with a jolt who he meant to ask. _

Voldemort rolled over and coughed up lakewater, blood and a grey substance he didn’t care to identify. Above him the Woodswoman loomed, her color high and the bone curtain over her arm.

“You did well,” decided Hilda. “Your death was very brief.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note that we had an error in the dates, and Harry and Voldemort arrived in the year 1943, not 1942. The date has been changed in the previous chapters, but sorry for any confusion!

****

**Chapter 4.1 That Which You Manifest is Before You; or, Harry looks in the Watch Fire**

On September 1, Harry roamed the Potter House for a while in the dark, wondering if he would miss it. 

He’d had only two _true_ homes: Privet Drive and Hogwarts. He’d never lived anywhere else that felt like a place he was intended to be. At the Burrow, which he loved, he was still a guest, though a beloved one. And 12 Grimmauld Place had always expressed the opposite of a welcome. 

Mary Potter was odd, and cold, and nothing like Harry had imagined, but she watched and listened to Harry avidly, in the manner of someone who was invested in him for no reason except for who he was. That was strange; he was accustomed to being renowned, and valued for his name and the accident of temporarily vanquishing Voldemort. But Mary knew about none of that. She cared about him for his genetics, his blood, a lineage that he didn’t even know and mattered very little to him. It didn’t warm him, precisely, but it did make him feel oddly secure in a relationship with an adult—cared for, even, in a way not even Dumbledore had. 

The House, too, felt like _his_. Its wards parted for him automatically. The rooms shifted temperature based on what he, personally, found comfortable—which, as it turned out, was a bit cooler than Mary preferred, and therefore an occasional, charmed fan would dart into a room when they were together and frantically generate a breeze in Harry’s direction. The magic here liked him, and felt familiar. It was something Harry hadn’t understood about family magic, or house magic, and so that night he felt he owed the place a goodbye. 

This spontaneous, late-night stroll was how Harry found himself in Mary Potter’s sitting room, where she had fallen asleep by the Watch Fire. 

Mary had it burning near constantly, and she watched it with a single-minded fascination that made the servants exchange uneasy looks. When Harry asked, offhand, how to light the one in his room, Adelaide was shocked. “Harry, no,” she hissed, and would say nothing more. 

Harry gleaned from Mary’s behavior, and the servants’ reaction, that the Watch Fire could be overly captivating. He thought of the allure of the Mirror of Erised. He knew from Mary’s brief explanation that the Watch Fire revealed glimpses of other places, and events significant to the viewer, but most often showed possible futures. 

Harry had looked plenty—a natural consequence of so much time with Mary—but he had seen nothing. Yet this night, something was different. When he wandered near the fire, more to ensure that Mary was asleep than to seek out a vision, he happened to glance in its direction, and froze. 

Harry saw his own face. He saw Tom Riddle, too. They were surrounded by leaping fire so the setting was indistinct, but their faces were close. As Harry watched, shocked into staring, the Harry in the Watch Fire closed his eyes and Tom Riddle put a long-fingered hand to his cheek. His eyes—which were dark, intense blue, a contrast to the surrounding flames—were intent on Harry’s face, and when Harry’s eyes opened, a mask fell back over Tom’s expression. But for a moment, there had been something sharp and yearning there. The Harry in the fire turned, suddenly, to face away from Tom, and Harry had the sudden startling sensation of looking into his own eyes before the vision of the two boys vanished. 

Harry was left panting as though he’d run a mile, and somehow distracted most of all by the comparatively minor final detail he’d gleaned from the scene. 

Both _that_ Harry and Tom Riddle had a Slytherin crest on their robes. 

“What are you doing out here?” Mary was now awake and upright in her chair. Harry startled, blinking, and brushed his hair out of his eyes as though she’d caught him doing something criminal, rather than merely looking at the fire that she stared into for hours on end. 

“I just…” he didn’t know how to complete the sentence. His mind was still racing with what he’d seen. It had been indescribably intimate. 

“What did the fire reveal?” Mary Potter sounded almost bored, as she always did, but her eyes were gleaming with interest. 

Harry cleared his throat, neatly avoiding a lie by saying, simply, “It showed me at Hogwarts. I was a Slytherin.” He scoffed. “As though I could ever be that.” But hadn’t the Hat mentioned that, when he’d worn it? Surely it hadn’t been serious. Harry knew he was a Gryffindor, and some hallucination in a fire wouldn’t convince him otherwise. 

“Ah, then I suppose a Slytherin you shall be,” Mary said, looking unsettled. “You must watch yourself.” 

“I won’t be a Slytherin,” Harry assured her. “That’s…actually impossible.” The thought of it made him pale. Living in a nest of conniving snakes led by a young Voldemort? Harry wouldn’t last a night. 

“Ah, but you shall,” said Mary consolingly. “If you didn’t want to know, you shouldn’t have looked.” 

“But you said the Watch Fire shows _potential_ futures, and that must have just been one _very_ unlikely possibility,” Harry insisted. 

“But you saw it. So it shall manifest. If you know the future, you create it. That’s the Watch Fire’s curse.” She looked at the fire almost accusingly, and rose from her chair. 

Harry was sure she was wrong about all of that. 

“Harry,” she said, soft and dangerous. “You could do quite well in Slytherin, but there’s something you must know. Slytherin has never been kind of half-bloods and Muggle sympathizers. Keep that in mind.” 

Harry might have been indignant. He would hardly choose _now_ to be ashamed of who he was or where he came from. But he remembered one of his last conversations with Dumbledore, who still seemed to believe Harry could be sent home. Dumbledore, also, had stressed that Harry was in a time not his own, and that while Dumbledore doubted that time travel of such magnitude was unprecedented, it was certainly unrecorded. No one could be sure what would happen if Harry tested the status quo. 

“I will,” he told Mary, and went back upstairs to bed, leaving her to douse her fire. 

**Chapter 4.2 The Surrealism of a Change in Time, but Not Place; or, Harry meets new people**

The following morning, Mary Potter nudged him into the Floo by himself, assuring him she’d already spoken to Headmaster Dippett and Harry would be fine on his own, and that there was no need to worry about the trunk as the Elves had already come for it. 

So through the Floo Harry went, rather disappointed to not be boarding the Hogwarts Express. 

“Potter,” exclaimed a terribly ancient person who Harry assumed must be Headmaster Dippet, as he sat on the other side of a desk that would one day be Dumbledore’s. “Harry Potter. Welcome, welcome. A transfer student. What a treat. We so rarely have them.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said distractedly, still primarily focused on regaining his balance which, as always, he’d nearly lost in the Floo. 

The office that would one day be Dumbledore’s was little changed, except for a distinct absence of noisy gadgets. Instead all the surfaces were bare and gleaming, save the desk itself, which was tremendously untidy, being covered in stacks of parchments sheets and parchment rolls. Shuffling through the uppermost third of one of these, Headmaster Dippet got ponderously to his feet. 

”First things first, you’ll be needing a House. Do you know the four Houses?” 

“I do know them, sir. But won’t the Hat choose for me?” 

“Oh, no, no, it’s too late for that. After eleven, the brain is no longer suitable for the Hat’s particular method of interpretation.” 

“Oh,” Harry said, wondering what any of that meant, and also delighted to be proving the Watch Fire wrong. He could choose, and he would choose–“Slytherin,” Harry said, when he’d fully intended to say “Gryffindor,” and then spent a moment choking on his own breath while Headmaster Dippet advanced to thump him concernedly on the back. 

“What just happened?” Harry asked, alarmed, as he felt magic pulsing around his vocal chords and making his fingers tickle, like the magical equivalent of a minor electric shock. 

“You’ve Sorted!” exclaimed Dippet. “Congratulations. I’ll call for Professor Slughorn.” 

Harry was still stunned when Professor Slughorn arrived, a boy in tow who looked almost precisely like the Gregory Goyle of Harry’s time, to such an extent that Harry struggled to repress his amazement when he was even introduced by the same name. 

“Goyle is also starting his sixth year, Potter,” explained Slughorn, smiling benevolently at the two of them as they clasped hands. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Potter,” said Gregory, adding a graceful bow incongruous with his burly frame. He didn’t sound like the Gregory from Harry’s time, but then it could be that Harry had never experienced a Goyle’s politeness. 

“And you, Goyle,” said Harry. 

“Fly, do you?” Gregory asked, and Harry realized he’d also felt the telltale rasp of calluses on Gregory’s hand. The question still seemed a bit random, but Harry smiled and hoped it didn’t look too forced. 

“Yes. You’re a Quidditch player too?” 

“Ah, Just recreationally,” he said with a rueful smile. He was uncannily likeable, really. “Not nearly good enough for the House team.” 

“Goyle will take you down to the Great Hall and introduce you to everyone, then I’ll make a public announcement also, Potter,” said Slughorn. 

Harry nodded, bemused, and when Gregory made a polite gesture for him to walk ahead, preceded him out of the Headmaster’s office. 

Hogwarts would not change significantly in the next fifty-odd years, Harry decided. Being there was something of a comfort, although— 

“We’ve all known you were coming,” said Gregory. “Lady Mary ensured you’d be made welcome.” 

Harry glanced over, curious, as they walked. Gregory seemed unconcerned, his hands in his robe pockets, his posture relaxed. But the way he’d said “made welcome,” Harry knew he didn’t mean simply received with friendliness. 

He didn’t really have a chance to give that much thought, let alone think of a way to ask for clarification without making Gregory realize he was a Muggle-raised imposter, before they reached the Great Hall. 

And with it, of course, they reached Tom Riddle. 

“That’s our prefect,” whispered Gregory. “And, um, watch your step. I’ll explain soon.” 

With that cryptic remark, Gregory fell silent to make an oddly formal bow from the waist in Tom Riddle’s direction, as though he was approaching a prince. Harry, catching Gregory’s expectant look, considered doing the same. He was capable of swallowing his pride. Probably. But instead he pretended not to notice Gregory’s glance, and Tom Riddle’s mask slipped momentarily, his narrowed eyes betraying his displeasure before he eased back into coolly affable. 

“Welcome to Hogwarts, Potter. My housemates tell me they were told to expect you, and make you welcome.” 

There was that specific phrasing again. 

Harry straightened and studied Riddle cautiously, looking for the signs of Voldemort he’d missed in the diary shade. Back then, he’d been no more than a kid. He felt a hundred years older now, and weary with the intervening life lessons. But Tom Riddle still looked like an appealing, handsome young man, with no trace of the monstrous figure he would evolve to be. 

“Here now, Potter, have a seat,” said a black-haired boy who looked quite young, maybe twelve. He scooted down on the bench to make room, across the table from Tom and next to a dark haired girl who must have been a Black, too. 

“I’m Anders Black, but everyone calls me Nero, and this is my sister Walburga, Lady Black. It’s been a while since a Potter was sorted Slytherin, but our families were allies back in the pre-Merlin revivalist period, you know.” 

“Ignore him, he’s unbearable,” said Walburga, showing a dimple when she smiled. The sight of her shocked Harry as not even Tom Riddle had. In the back of his head he heard her howling portrait, but in the flesh she was lovely with a slender, refined beauty, and her voice was deep and melodic. 

“It’s nice to meet you both. I don’t know much about history.” Harry slid into the seat, sitting a little closer to Nero than to Walburga, and feeling the crackling energy across the table from him, he chanced another look at Tom Riddle. 

But Riddle, outwardly at least, was paying Harry no attention. 

Gregory had bent to whisper loudly in Harry’s ear. “He doesn’t like to be stared at.” 

Walburga sighed and Nero winced, catching Harry’s eye and nodding. 

“We can explain later,” he said. 

Harry was distantly amused by the fact these people thought they knew better than him the dangers of Tom Riddle. 

****

After studying Harry’s timetable, Goyle introduced him to Natila Diamo, a Goyle cousin in Ravenclaw, with whom he apparently had a first class in common that morning. Divination, Harry was startled to learn, was a core subject at this time. 

Natila was a friendly, fresh-faced girl who reminded Harry of someone, though he couldn’t say whom. Likely an acquaintance in his own time who was some sort of descendant. 

“So, who should I avoid in the boys’ dormitories this evening?” Harry was trying to seem no more than half-serious, but rather panicked at the prospect of sleeping in close proximity to a bunch of Slytherins, let alone their homicidal leader. 

Natila smiled and waggled her eyebrows. “It isn’t all true, what they say about Slytherins.” Then she winked, and Harry was confused, and frowned. 

“Um, I meant, is there anyone who I shouldn’t cross? Tom Riddle, maybe,” he added, since he assumed Riddle intimidated most students in the school, especially outside Slytherin. 

Natila’s expression remained serene. “Oh, Tom? He’s lovely. Huge help with getting the Muggle Studies course off the ground. It’s still an elective, but we’re hoping it will be offered more broadly after Dippet hires a full-time instructor next term.” 

Tom Riddle, championing the development of a Muggle Studies course? It must be strategic? Harry paused, frowning, to think, but Natila nudged him along. 

“We’d best hurry, Potter. We don’t want to be late.” 

The Divination teacher had an ordinary classroom and a drawn, but surprisingly focused expression. Harry hardly knew what to do with himself during an entire lecture on the subject of the legal rate Seers could charge for their predictive services. It wasn’t the most interesting thing he’d ever learned. But learning anything practical in Divination came as a shock. 

Natila waved at him as they filed out, and Harry found himself meeting the eye of Walburga Black, who’d been leaning against the wall and apparently anticipating a hand-off. 

She looked at him with much more interest than she had at breakfast. “So, Tom is interested enough to set up a procession of strictly female babysitters for you today, Potter? You must give off some sort of pheromone we ladies can’t detect.” While he gaped, she looked his lower half over carefully, and though she couldn’t possibly see anything other than the modest fall of his robes, Harry was horrified. 

“ _Black_ ,” he exclaimed in a furious whisper, turning away from her and scrubbing at his hair. “What are you talking about?” 

“Oh, don’t act like such a blushing virgin. I know you must be fairly sophisticated, or he wouldn’t…” then a thoughtful look came over her face, and she started walking without comment, clearly expecting Harry to follow. He did. She had a charisma he couldn’t deny and which put him on edge, even when she wasn’t stuck in a portrait and howling about blood traitors. 

“Maybe that is what he prefers, which would explain…” she tapped her wand absently against her cheek, looking askance at Harry, who still hadn’t composed himself. “I wouldn’t look so wretched, if I were you, Potter. You’re lucky he’s noticing you as a conquest, rather than competition. I’d lie back and think of England.” 

“I beg your pardon, but…” Harry was still mostly stammering, and her knowing look didn’t help. 

“Now, here’s Greengrass,” murmured Walburga. She gave Harry a final, quietly amused, and assessing look. “She’ll see you to your next class.” She observed Harry’s confusion and sighed. “You didn’t think _I_ was a babysitter, surely? Potter, look sharp. I know it’s your first day, but you’re a Slytherin now. You must be more observant.” 

****

**Chapter 4.3 Curious Events and Customs Most Archaic; or, Harry doesn’t feel at home in Slytherin**

Time travel aside, it was a fairly ordinary day of classes, between which Harry pretended to need his shepherdesses’ help to get around. That evening, however, he entered the common room feeling apprehensive. 

Seeing a glossy blond who was unmistakably a Malfoy with Goyle, Harry sighed, put his shoulders back and approached the two wizards. Over his shoulder he nodded a farewell to his final escort, a ginger-haired girl named Marjorie whose last name he’d immediately forgotten, though he recalled it was long and sounded French. 

Goyle stood up with a friendly grin, though he did seem more guarded than Harry recalled from earlier in the day. He was sure that was only paranoia. He’d decided that Walburga was probably trying to get in his head, for inscrutable Slytherin reasons. 

But just in case she wasn’t-- 

Harry was pretty sure he liked boys as well as girls, but that was a far stretch from feeling prepared to entertain any sort of attention from _Tom Riddle_ , whose differences from Voldemort were strictly his pretty face and...well, his pretty everything, really. But that wasn’t exactly a revelation. Harry had known about this aspect of Voldemort—his handsome youth—since he was twelve. 

“Harry,” called a high, deceptively sweet voice, and Harry turned with slowly growing dread to see Walburga reclining amidst a handful of other students on some floor cushions near the fire. She raised her hand and wiggled her fingers. Sprawled next to her was Nero, and one of the girls was brushing his hair. A tray of cheese and figs sat on the floor, glinting dully in the firelight. The scene could have been staged for a portrait reenacting the Roman era. Harry approached cautiously. 

“There you are,” purred Walburga. “How were your classes? Are you hungry?” He eyed her tray, and for the first time noticed she held a goblet of what appeared to be wine. 

“Isn’t dinner in less than an hour?” Harry hedged. He had the feeling, in his brief time in Slytherin, that there were customs and expectations of certain manners that he was trampling all over without knowing what to look for, and he saw confirmation that he was fumbling at this very moment in the exaggeratedly nauseated expression he caught one of Walburga’s companions making at another, while her friend tried not to giggle. 

“We don’t have _dinner_ in the Great Hall,” Walburga said quietly. Nero chuckled and she put an imperious hand on his arm. “Brother, don’t make fun. Harry wasn’t raised in the traditional way, as you know. His caretakers were modern thinkers. Free spirits. There’s nothing wrong with that.” 

Harry fidgeted. Now that she was saying something, he remembered the Slytherin table seeming underpopulated sometimes, even in his own time. He had assumed they were eating earlier or later, since dinner in the Great Hall was something of a come-and-go affair. 

But before he could feel too deeply chagrined, Walburga sat up and set down her wine glass. She gave her friends a significant, solemn look, and they disbursed as quickly and gracefully as butterflies. Nero did not follow, but he did sit up. He bore a strong resemblance to how Sirius must have looked at the same age, down to the cocky half-smile that seemed to have a permanent place on his expressive mouth. 

“Harry,” Walburga said, leaning toward him slightly for emphasis. 

She seemed sincerely upset, but Harry was also vaguely reminded of the way his Aunt Petunia had been able to summon a smile, frown or tear at will and convince their neighbors he was a beloved but wayward nephew. Harry shook off that reflection so he could focus on what she was saying. 

“Please don’t feel ostracized. Nero and I have been speaking.” She gave her brother a weighted glance, and he compressed his mouth into a more serious line, though it immediately returned to its customary smirk when she looked away. “We would like to help guide you through these early days in Slytherin House. Amongst snakes, a misstep at the outset can be…” 

“Disastrous,” murmured Nero, leaning his elbows on his knees. He waggled his eyebrows. “We like you, Harry. Well, that’s not true. We don’t know you. But the Potters and Blacks are ripe for a refreshed alliance, so we _want_ to like you.” 

All of that made sense, in a very Slytherin way. Walburga looked annoyed. “Nero is being unseemly. It is for the good of our family that we do a good turn to a well-meaning young Pureblood in need of our guidance.” 

Harry certainly saw no reason to correct her misinterpretation of his blood status, thinking of Mary’s words the night before. 

“Now, were you any other transfer student, we could arrange for you to have a guide who would be close to you at all times, but…” 

“You’re in Tom Riddle’s year, and Tom Riddle’s dormitory,” said Nero. He said “Tom Riddle” in the way that Harry would have said it to Ron: like it tasted bad, and should be spat. It was not the way Harry had heard _anyone_ talk about Tom Riddle, though, since he’d come through the Time Room. 

Walburga was solemn. “He has a strange control over the students in your year, and many of the students in the lower years.” 

“And,” Nero murmured, leaning closer, and Harry found himself stepping closer to Nero and Walburga, also, drawn in by an odd sense of intimacy with them in that moment. “He’s famous for expecting...well, certain favors.” 

Walburga nodded solemnly, as though it was obvious what Nero meant. Harry’s mind blanked, much as it had in the hallway when Walburga had made certain allusions before. But they couldn’t be _serious_ … 

“Walburga, Nero,” said a stiff voice, and the sense of a privacy charm encasing Harry and the Black siblings in a bubble suddenly burst. He jerked around, red-faced with horror at the thought that anyone might have overheard, considering the subject matter. The tall Malfoy stood just behind Harry, glancing at him as dismissively as if he wasn’t there. 

“Lucius,” snapped Walburga, raising one eyebrow and looking pointedly to Harry and back. The name startled Harry, particularly because he hadn’t thought this Malfoy looked very much like Lucius would one day—but of course this was an uncle or some sort of cousin, not Draco’s father. 

Lucius sucked in a breath, cleared his throat, and jerked a nod in Harry’s direction. 

“Potter,” he said tightly. “Please excuse the…interruption. I’m Lucius Malfoy.” He bent at the waist to as miniscule a degree as possible and Harry bowed in return. 

“Not a problem, Malfoy,” he murmured. 

Lucius nodded again, then returned his attention to the Walburga and Nero. “I’ve been...invited, as it were,” he began, darting a glance at Harry that clearly communicated how much he would prefer Harry not hear what he was about to say, “to ask Riddle to the manor this weekend.” 

The Blacks looked surprised, though not enough to disturb Walburga’s serene composure or Nero’s mocking little smile. 

“Oh yes, I imagine you have. Potter, you may not understand this, as you were brought up non-traditionally. But to have a half-blood houseguest in one’s ancestral home…” she shuddered delicately. “Don’t looks so bothered, Lucius. We can speak freely around Potter. He’s aligning with House Black, aren’t you, Harry?” 

“Oh, don’t look so grumpy, Lucius,” crooned Nero. “You can’t begrudge us our alliance when House Malfoy isn’t presently in a position to attract new friends.” 

Lucius’s cheeks were stained an ugly red. 

“Too far, brother,” chided Walburga, but Nero didn’t seem to feel criticized. He continued to smile smugly at Lucius, who steadily became redder, while Harry very much wished to be standing somewhere else. 

“You should go down to dinner, if you like, Harry,” said Walburga, mercifully dismissing him. “Marigold will accompany you in case you’re not sure what to say or do.” She pointed across the room, and a dark-haired girl who couldn’t have been older than a second year came over. Harry recognized her from the group that had been assembled around Walburga when he arrived. She nodded coolly at Harry and then smiled at Walburga. 

“Yes, Black?” 

“Kindly go down to dinner with Potter, Nott.” 

“Of course,” said Marigold, with a quick smile for Nero, who was once again fully sprawled on the floor, eating figs. “Are you ready now, Potter?” 

Getting out of the common room at any cost appealed to Harry, so he nodded, and then when he saw Walburga shake her head almost imperceptibly, he cleared his throat. 

“I’m ready now, Nott.” 

Marigold looked at him with amber-colored eyes that were an odd contrast to her dark hair. “Excellent.” 

When they were in the corridor, Marigold have him an appraising sidelong look. “So, Potter, what is it about you that has made the Blacks take an interest?” 

She sounded a lot older than Harry had thought at first. He wanted to tousle his own hair, but felt more self-conscious than he could ever recall being, and knew somehow it wouldn’t be a very Slytherin gesture. 

“I suppose it’s that you’re a Potter,” Marigold decided. “The Blacks have always collected alliances the way Muggles collect lice.” 

“I know nothing about it,” Harry said honestly. 

Marigold sniffed. “Well, that’s obvious. I can’t believe I’m going to the Great Hall in the _evening_ ,” she added. 

“You’ve never been? Aren’t you, what, a fourth year?” 

Marigold scoffed. “I’m not a fourth year, Potter.” 

He relaxed a bit. He’d known she was a bit older than she looked, probably nearer his own age. 

“I’m a second year,” she added, and Harry stared. 

“Really?” 

“Potter, why would I lie to you? Unless it was just for fun, that is. But it would be much more fun to draw you in, make you trust me, then pull the rug out from under you at the moment when I could get the maximum satisfaction from it—or even better, the enjoyment would just be an ancillary benefit, when the thrust of my betrayal would actually serve my greater purposes, that have little to do with you at all.” 

Harry stared at her, which was easier to do when he stumbled in surprise and she walked ahead, posture erect and expression unbothered. He focused on his feet and worried that he wasn’t positive what “ancillary” meant. 

Yes, looking into that stupid portentous fire had been a mistake. Definitely. 

Harry cleared his throat. “That makes sense, Nott.” 

She looked incredulous, which deepened Harry’s confusion. 

“Interesting,” she murmured to herself, and they walked on. 

In the Great Hall, Marigold subtly steered him to the far end of the Slytherin table, where a few other students eyed them curiously, but the table was sparsely populated and the people who were there seemed to be conversing with students from other houses. Marigold hovered over the bench while casting a long look at the Ravenclaw table, then sat and indicated Harry should sit beside her, so he did. 

“I assume I’m supposed to escort you so you don’t embarrass us, like everyone else had to today,” she said cheerfully. “But take care not to embarass me, personally, Potter. I may be young,” she sniffed, lifting her chin, “but I’m my House’s scion, and I’ll be treated that way by a Potter, Merlin help me.” Her eyes were flinty when they locked with Harry’s. “Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Nott.” He cleared his throat. Her eyes narrowed, and she became very pale, as though intensely angry, but then she looked down at the table, fixed a smile on her face, and shone it not on Harry but on the Ravenclaw student who was shyly joining them on the other side of the table. It was fascinating to watch. 

“Good evening, Alicia,” said Marigold warmly. 

“Good evening, Lady Nott,” said Alicia, who also appeared to be a first year, and had dense black curls and an olive complexion. She nodded to Harry. “I’m Alicia Nott. It’s nice to meet you.” 

“Harry Potter,” he said, smiling back. She seemed like a nice girl. “It’s nice to meet you, also.” 

The two girls exchanged pleasant, limited conversation while Harry ate. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, but in hindsight they had never gone to the Great Hall for lunch, and his appetite was absent during all the nervousness of the breakfast table. Harry was accustomed to fasting periods from his childhood, so he sometimes didn’t even notice his hunger until he was presented with the opportunity to eat, and then it was hard to notice anything else. Still, he’d had tidy and efficient table manners drilled into him by Aunt Petunia’s rolled newspaper practically from infancy, so he ate quickly but without attracting too much ire from his chaperone. 

Eventually, and, sadly, before dessert, Marigold decided it was time to go. She had been clipped with Harry since Alicia joined them, so he followed her while cautiously planning what to say. 

“So, is Alicia a cousin or something?” 

She turned her icy stare on him, somehow managing to seem like she was looking down her nose even though she was a solid foot and a half shorter than Harry. “No, Potter. There’s _another_ Pureblood family with the last name Nott.” 

His cheeks heated and she sighed. “She’s a second cousin.” 

“Ah, and she, um, called you Lady Nott,” he added. “I’m sorry I didn’t address you like that.” 

This time Marigold’s look was quite sharp. “Are you?” 

Harry nodded hesitantly. “That means you’re the head of your family? That’s what you meant, when you said ‘scion,’ only I didn’t realize. I apologize.” 

Marigold pursed her lips, as though preparing to say more, but a gaggle of teenage Gryffindors came around the corridor, effectively terminating her and Harry’s conversation. He watched Marigold go utterly tense, and nearly reach for her wand. Surprised, he followed the direction of her sudden, hunted look, and was struck with a burst of intense longing at the sight of someone who so closely resembled Ron Weasley, Harry did a double take. 

But the tall, gangly redhead was finer-featured, and his head of red hair was tidier but less luxurious. And most of all, his affable grin fell off his face and he adopted a stony look that Harry had never seen on his best mate’s face. 

“Weasley,” Marigold said into the sudden silence. 

The boy folded his arms over his chest, but in that way she had, Marigold managed to look anything but towered over. She folded her arms in a deliberate mimicry of his posture, and Harry heard one of the other Gryffindors snicker. 

“Nott,” said the boy at last. His gaze flickered briefly to Harry. “Escorting around the class pet, are you?” 

Harry hadn’t expected a positive reception with the Gryffindors, being a Slytherin, but even so, his jaw dropped a bit at this remark. 

The Gryffindors tittered. 

“Oh, Weasley,” said Marigold, very quietly. “Potter has his own, independent lordship. All my pets wear red.” 

The boy went pale in the same way Marigold had when Harry fumbled her assertion of her title, and his friends were equally silent behind him. Then, with a furious snarl that finally seemed to startle Marigold, Weasley drew his wand, stalking a step nearer. 

Without thinking, Harry stepped in front of Marigold, who had recoiled and was scrambling to draw her own wand, but her arms were tangled in her robes. Harry, on the other hand, was holding the holly wand without remembering anything except the decision to point it at Ron’s ancestor. 

The red-haired boy was breathing heavily, and didn’t seem to focus on Harry at first, still staring past him at Marigold with ferocious intensity. 

“You may be _Lady Nott_ ,” he said scathingly, “but you don’t know how to do much with that wand yet, do you? I’ll…” He started forward again, and Harry, startled, cast a swift and isolated _Incarcerous_ to his ankles, hobbling him but not knocking him down. 

“Please stop shouting,” Harry said, “and holster your wand.” 

The boy blinked at Harry, then down at his feet. “Did you do that wordlessly?” 

“Yes. I’d be happy to show you how sometime. Now, please,” Harry pleaded, “holster your wand.” 

The boy did, and Harry terminated his _Incarcerous_. They looked at each other. 

“Out of the way, Potter,” snapped Marigold, and Harry obediently shuffled out of the space between the two of them. She had regained her composure, leaving no trace of fear in her face or posture—she looked furious instead. “You’re fortunate that Potter was here to help you cool your head, Weasley,” she snarled, and started off with a glance at Harry and a jerk of her head. 

Harry exchanged a final, bewildered glance with the Weasley whose first name he had yet to learn, and hurried after her. 

“What…” he began to ask, then remembered it wasn’t the Slytherin way to ask direction questions. But while he paused, frowning, to plan something more circuitous, Marigold spun around and glared at him. 

“Why did you do that?” she demanded. 

Harry, thrown on the defensive, raised his eyebrows. “What? Should I have just let him cast a, what, sixth-year spell? You don’t have to be embarrassed that you’re not well trained enough yet in your magic…” 

Marigold barked out a single, mirthless laugh, which was not the reaction he’d anticipated. “Of course I’m not embarrassed,” she snapped. “I haven’t even hit the halfway point on my magical core stabilization. I’m _twelve_.” She put her head to one side, as though he was a puzzle she had just realized wasn’t yet solved. “Potter, what are the three familial lines of the sixteenth Dragonette?” 

“Er,” Harry said. 

Marigold laughed again, this time with sincerity, and for the first time in their brief acquaintance she looked and sounded twelve. Her laugh was clear and bright, like a small bell. “So, you helped me—just because? Because I’ve been so nice to you? Because I’m younger, and a girl?” 

“You have _not_ been nice,” Harry muttered. So, it was the other things, he supposed, but he wasn’t sure. “I didn’t really think about it,” he added, which was true. Everything had happened quickly, and in moments like that, Harry acted without thinking first. 

“Apparently not,” said Marigold, still smiling. “Oh, Potter. Walburga Black doesn’t know quite what she’s done, throwing us together.” She winked. “I need to return you to the common room, but a word of advice, since I now owe you a substantial favor: Mary Potter let your secret slip. The Blacks know you aren’t a Pureblood, and they’ve known all along.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to trashgoblinwizardparty for the beta reading. <3

* * *

 

 

**Chapter 5.1**

**The Curiosity and Mettle of a Young Witch in Gryffindor is Not to be Underestimated; or, Minnie eavesdrops (again)**

Minnie had never really thought of herself as a thrill-seeker, but she’d have been lying if she didn’t admit how it pleased her to track the mystery of the transfer student in Slytherin. Particularly after what she observed the night she’d flown from the Tower at the end of last term.

That had been just before all of Hogwarts went mad, Myrtle Warren died, and the faultless Tom Riddle solved the murder mystery before the school could close.

Or had he? Minnie saw Tom Riddle differently, since that night. Superimposed over the polite, bright young student was the cold, assessing interrogator who’d legilimized a housemate without asking first. It was a frightfully delicate and advanced spell which, while not forbidden, was meant for medical and criminal emergencies, according to their first year curriculum on Ethical Spell Use.

So, when the curious stranger arrived and it seemed to Minnie he could be the boy from Abraxas’ report, who appeared in the Department of Mysteries, she couldn’t stop herself from seeking out Tom Riddle’s congregation by the Forest’s edge a second time.

Her cat wasn’t registered, but only because she was too young to apply. Surely she couldn’t be accused of abusing this loophole when national security could be on the line.

She’d watched the lunar calendar and knew when they’d be under the same phase of the moon, and her heart thudded with fresh anxiety when her first guess was correct. Lucius Malfoy was with them this time, as Abraxas had graduated. Lucius looked less aloof than his cousin had. He watched Tom Riddle with an open, almost hungry expression that would have made Minnie blush, but the cat didn’t think it was very interesting.

“He’s nothing,” Lucius insisted. “Abraxas told you.”

“No, Abraxas wrote me,” Riddle corrected swiftly. “You insist on keeping me from confirming his account personally.”

Lucius swallowed.

“The Blacks seem to believe he’s really a Potter,” Gregory Goyle pointed out. “They’re being awful friendly.”

“He’s _obviously_ a Potter,” Tom Riddle muttered with a measure of scorn. Minnie understood his impatience. The transfer student _was_ obviously a Potter; they all had a certain look, and Mary Potter had been visiting wizarding families with Hogwarts-age students all summer. Even Minnie’s mother had tea with her in some upscale place above Diagon Alley.

“Also, Walburga and her sniveling little sibling could easily be up to something where he’s concerned. Blacks enjoy toying with their prey.”

“There is a rumor,” Goyle volunteered, “that he’s a Half-Blood Fleamont got on some Muggle peasant, and they only just decided to pick him up and make him presentable. May never have an heir otherwise.”

“A Half-Blood,” Tom Riddle said thoughtfully. “The Potters? They may pay lip service to Mudblood’s issues, but they’ve certainly not sacrificed the purity of their bloodline to that ideal in the past several hundred years.”

Goyle nodded obediently. “It’s only a rumor, my lord, as I said.”

All three Nott triplets were there, and one of them blurted, “It’s more than a rumor, my lord. Lady Potter said it herself, to Lady Avery.”

Tom Riddle’s sharp eyes fixed on the triplet, who winced as though Riddle’s direct attention was nearly more than he could bear. “She told our mother, who told our aunt.”

“And surely your aunt told Lord Black.”

The triplets didn’t confirm or deny. Riddle sighed.

“We’ll admit him, provisionally, in the usual way,” he said, and all the boys blushed, except for Lucius Malfoy, who licked his lower lip. “Then we’ll wait and see.” He gave them each a narrow look. “I’m sure I don’t have to mention that he will be watched at all times.”

They all chorused: “Yes, my lord.” Minnie’s cat flattened her ears against her head.

Minnie, again, was left with more questions than answers, and the faint thought that spying was not really her forte. What had she meant to find out, and to whom would she report it? The only Professor she was close with beyond her absent Head of House was Professor Merrythought, who left abruptly in the wake of the events last summer.

But Professor Dumbledore was not entirely out of reach, she supposed. She could always write to him…

There was always the possibility such an incriminating letter could be intercepted. And by Tom Riddle. Not the daylight version who nodded and smiled politely at everyone who looked his way in the Hogwarts corridors, but the moonlight version, frighteningly cold and intense.

She raced back toward the castle on silent cat’s paws, and she did not write to Dumbledore. But on the next second night of the waxing gibbous moon, Minnie would venture out once again to listen to Tom Riddle make his plans.

 

 

**Chapter 5.2**

**Having Received the Benefits of a Bargain, Luck, and Intellect, Voldemort Embarks; or, Voldemort gets a present and has an idea**

Voldemort and Hilda took their final tea together on a rainy morning, which put Hilda on edge. She was always uneasy when her fire was out, and kept her bone curtain close instead of in its place above the mantel. It had been active since the lake. Even from within his tent, Voldemort sometimes heard its furious rattles. He assumed she’d fed the bones from the water, but in all honesty he had the barest understanding of her magic outside of Potions, which as it turned out behaved similarly whether their instructions had ever been written down or not.

Voldemort was so accustomed to Hilda’s tea after their summer together, he barely noticed the lumps and debris. After he finished his cup, he looked up at her. She was fingering a particularly yellow, irregularly shaped bone he thought looked like a mandible. Her wayward tooth was clearly visible and she’d pressed the tip of her tongue against it as she sometimes did when lost in thought.

“Do you have any parting words?”

She looked up at him. Her red eye pulsed with energy, and Voldemort frowned and looked away from her. She rummaged in her robe pocket, produced a grimy eye patch, and placed it over her red eye with a relieved sigh.

Voldemort knew from experience that magically-enhanced vision could cause a certain strain, though it was a small place to pay for superior perception. He had wondered, most of all, if his eyes would be changed when he came back out of the water. But when he rolled over, gasping, and caught sight of his reflection in the water’s edge, he was relieved by what he saw. The pupils were round, but the scarlet color remained.

Red eyes weren’t unheard of in wizarding culture. They were an unexplained result of various magical experiments, or at least that was the commonly accepted theory. But Voldemort recalled, the day he’d interviewed for the position of DADA instructor, Professor Dippet catching a glimpse of their changing character and a frown line appearing at the side of his mouth.

Then, Tom Riddle had been indignant. He was quite young to be physiologically influenced by his magic, and he wore the marks with pride. It had rankled, particularly, to feel that Dippet was being critical. _Dippet_ , who’d spent hundreds of years on the planet and achieved no greater aspiration than being in charge of a children’s school.

Now, Voldemort wondered what Dippet had wanted to see in a candidate, and which he hadn’t seen in Tom Riddle. He’d known Riddle; known him to be bright. He’d always liked him, and demonstrated as much by awarding him Head Boy. Had he been too young? Was it truly the indication of his independent studies into the wider, untested magical waters that had displeased Dippet, a firmly grey wizard who made no secret of his neutrality on such topics?

Voldemort compared that version of himself with the last DADA Professor he’d had at Hogwarts. The middle-aged former Auror who would be starting...well, any day now.

Voldemort’s thoughts ground to a halt.

He’d been planning to go out into wizarding London, find a flat, roam at night, put an ear to the ground and plan his next move. But now that the possibility of infiltrating Hogwarts _immediately_ presented itself, he couldn’t contain his excitement. He’d find that Auror—Andrews, had been his name—he’d knock him out, store him as he’d bade Crouch store the Auror Moody. There was a lovely, circular irony to it, that he should improve upon his own plan. Polyjuice was more easily obtained now than ever, as the ingredients were simpler: they hadn’t yet hunted the blueleaf Salamander to extinction, so its tail could be used in place of the lacewing flies.

It would be expensive. But surely the Odin’s Blood would suffice for an even trade, and then he could pilfer from Slughorn for the ingredients he’d subsequently require. Slughorn was notoriously bad at inventory and maintenance of his stores. It was an open secret that if one boy flattered him during a fireside evening when he invited his favorites over for whiskey and dessert, the others could steal into his supply cabinet and take what they wished without fear of discovery or punishment.

It was already taking perfect shape in his mind. He would wait until Andrews had completed his interview, so there would be no question of his selection. Voldemort reached amongst the litter on the tea table and withdrew the most recent copy of the _Prophet_ , flipping to the classifieds section, making Hilda hiss.

“Soon I’ll be gone, and with me, my offensive literacy,” he muttered without looking up. When he found the advertisement, his heart thudded faster. Interviews were today—he wasn’t too late. In fact, it all fell into place as neatly as kismet. He stood up and met Hilda’s uncovered eye with a grin.

“Oh, Tom,” she sighed, smirking a bit as she leaned back in her chair, bone curtain sliding over her chest like a blanket, eerily silent when it had nothing to say. “It’s been a delight to have you. I have something for you. Dug!”

The elf appeared, holding a distinctive oil-cloth bag stuffed with something twice its size.

“You’ll need to procure a chest for it, I suppose, as it will not shrink.”

Voldemort glared at her. “What is this? You can’t demand a price _after_ offering a gift.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Out in the sands, some fool kinswoman told a wand wielder, who wrote it down.”

Ah. “For your sake, I hope she put up a fight.”

Continuing to look scornful, Hilda snorted. “She lasted, at least, until they’d cut off all her fingers and a few of her toes.”

Voldemort nodded, understanding that Hilda believed she could withstand all manner of torture before spilling a Woodswoman secret, and perhaps she was right. In his experience, however, there was a particular torment which would unlock any mind; unravel any will. Hilda, for example, was quite fond of that red eye.

“So, you’re giving me something you see as worthless.”

“Naturally,” Hilda confirmed. “Though if you refuse it, I’ll wait until your younger, more grateful self visits me again.”

Voldemort frowned, and took the sack from the elf, which growled as Voldemort’s hand neared but fortunately did not bite.

“I wish you well.”

Voldemort looked at her askance, already halfway to the door. “Do you?”

“Tom,” she murmured, standing up and walking over to him. Her tangled hair was flat in one place where she’d recently worn a hat; her gnarled fingers had dirt packed beneath the yellow nails; but he didn’t recoil when she patted his cheek. She had never touched him before that he could recall, not since he was twelve and she grasped his wrists to hold him still when she plunged the knife into his arms then shoved him backwards into the lake.

“I truly do,” she promised.

He recalled coming to Hilda’s often in the summers. Sometimes, when the orphanage was particularly unbearable for one reason or another, he came every day. She would look at him with her brown eye and offer him something edible. She would look at him with her red eye and show him how to ask the Watch Fire for a vision, or the old dance by the lake’s edge that would make three dead fish bob to the surface and float to the bank.

Voldemort felt. That was all; he _felt_. It was the way he thought the first surge of emotion would be experienced by an infant: welling and impossible to parse. This, he recalled faintly, was supposedly why they cried so often.

Blinking, he jerked back from her touch and was at once more himself, though he had never been more eager to be away. Andrews. Auror. Not yet teaching but _interviewing today._ First, he needed two trunks: one for the bones, and another for Andrews.

 

 

**Chapter 5.3**

**To Take a Live Target Versus a Simple Elimination; or, Voldemort executes a kidnapping and plans a murder**

Voldemort knew very little about Andrews except that he had been Tom’s DADA professor for two years, and he was an Auror. And, one day in a brief duel Voldemort would kill him, grey-haired and half-blind but having left retirement, on principle, to assist in the war.

It was not difficult to subdue Andrews, though the duel was messier than Voldemort had intended. Aurors were quick, but Voldemort had been a Hogwarts dueling champion. And once, strapped for cash, he’d entered an open tournament so he could buy a unicorn hide and five illegally imported magic carpets. Voldemort had never been beaten in a straight draw, not in this body. He nearly regretted having to exchange it for Andrews’s, and so soon.

The difficulty was maneuvering Andrews’s petrified body into a trunk. There was plenty of expanded space _inside_ the trunk, but the point of entry was awkward. Voldemort had to rearrange his limbs several times before he finally found an angle that worked, and then when they got the room above the Leaky Cauldron, he was forced to repeat the process in reverse to unpack Andrews and finish up.

When Voldemort terminated the spell, Andrews immediately strained against the ropes Voldemort had conjured with _Incarcerous_ to bound him tightly to a chair. “What’s the meaning of this?” he snarled. “You don’t want to know what Aurors do to someone who snatched one of their own, let alone harmed one. If I were you, I’d—”

“I don’t intend to be linked to any crime of which you are the victim,” Voldemort said amiably. Andrews glared at him another moment, then his shoulders slumped.

Andrews glared again, but he was still groggy, so it came out more as a grimace. “You’re a better dueler than I thought you’d be,” he muttered. Voldemort studied him curiously.

“Given it some thought, have you?”

“I had to distract myself somehow from the experience of being locked in a trunk.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself for how soft you’ve grown,” Voldemort assured him with a sly smile. “The war has only just come to us. I’m sure all your fellow Aurors have lost their edge, too.” Voldemort pried back one of the man’s eyelids so he could check his dilation. Still too foggy, probably, for _Legilimens_.

Andrews shouted at Voldemort’s clinical touch, and Voldemort absently reinforced the Privacy Charms on the walls and door while considering his surroundings.

The room at the Leaky Cauldron was less discrete than a Muggle space, but Voldemort liked that he could casually levitate two trunks down the stairs and into the street without violating the Statute of Secrecy.

“Who are you with?” Andrews demanded glumly. Voldemort saw he was flexing his hands, unobtrusively enough that someone other than Voldemort might not have noticed. Testing the ropes, now that he’d tested the sound-canceling spells. He had sandy hair and a mouth that would have been pleasant if it wasn’t bracketed by frown lines. Otherwise, he was ordinary looking, average build with a bit of unbecoming roundness to his shoulders, and lean enough, but short in the thigh and torso. He would look boxy in traditional robes.

“I serve only myself,” Voldemort assured him.

Something gleamed in Andrews’s eyes, and Voldemort pressed a palm against his parted lips before he could utter whatever wandless spell it was which he knew.

“It’s interesting,” Voldemort wondered, removing his hand now that his touch and his own wandless _and_ wordless spell had left Andrews’s lips conveniently sealed, “but I do wonder sometimes how much of what I perceive is my enhanced senses, and how much is simply being more observant than I once was. Whatever the reason, you won’t escape me, Auror Andrews, though you are welcome to try. I do enjoy a bit of diversion of an evening.”

Voldemort briefly wondered if he should dispense with Andrews and save his corpse under stasis rather than undergoing all the fuss of keeping him alive, though it was true that he liked the idea of having something to take out of its box if he grew bored. And while he could recall many of Andrews’s affectations from those long-ago DADA lessons, he would need more of his memories and mind for advanced material if he was contacted by Andrews’s colleagues or family.

“You seem to be yourself again,” he decided, and Andrews’s stare was resigned, but sharp and cognizant, in silent confirmation.

Voldemort reviewed Andrews’s interview—he’d been hired on the spot—and the contents of Dippet’s instructions regarding the secure Floo to his rooms. Then he withdrew from _Legilimens_ , levitated Andrews over the trunk, chair and all, and dropped him inside from a greater height to avoid the tedium of arranging him. The force of the impact got him past the mouth of the trunk nicely. Voldemort let him have his voice back as well, and unbound him from the chair, all without so much as peering down into the trunk.

“Are you _joking_?” came Andrews’s deep shout, as distant and distorted as if it had come from the bottom of a well.

Voldemort, who disdained rhetorical questions, closed the lid of the trunk and activated the lock in answer.

He couldn’t go into Hogwarts, find the boy, and kill him immediately; he needed a chance to examine his mind. And discretion would afford him the opportunity to stage Harry Potter’s death as a mere disappearance, then stay on staff awhile while he planned his next move. He could remove the boy after his class. He’d make him stay afterward. He’d find out what he’d spent decades questioning— _how?—_ and then he’d dispose of Harry Potter, once and for all.

Voldemort cast _Tempus_ and then enhanced it with the complex wand movement that was the most practical thing he’d ever been taught in Divination. Half a starry sky and a moon appeared around the clock, showing him the sun’s orientation and the phase of the moon, from which he deduced the date.

It was September third. He disliked the thought of Potter so near Tom Riddle, but surely nothing of significance could have occurred in so few days, and if it had, everyone who took the _Prophet_ knew Dumbledore wouldn’t be back until the second week of term from his stint as combat consultant, of all things. Even if Harry Potter knew something, which was unlikely in the extreme, he hadn’t the opportunity to tell Dumbledore yet.

Voldemort went through the Floo, following Dippet’s instructions precisely. He wore Andrews’s body and his stern, watchful default expression as he stepped out into the Professor’s quarters linked to the DADA classroom. Finding himself alone, he relaxed. The rooms were bare—ready for someone new to settle in—and contained some dusty furniture and a mostly-empty bookshelf. It was stocked only with the first through sixth year texts and a few notebooks with loose-leaf notes.

For some reason, the idea of unpacking there, even as part of his ruse of a new Professor settling in, made him slightly nauseous. He closed his eyes—it was a habit now—and…

_Harry was slumped in a chair in the Potions classroom, a dull throb in his arm making it difficult for him to pay attention, though he’d vowed that he would try to capitalize on having a Potions Professor who wasn’t actively sabotaging his ability to learn in every class._

_Unable to help himself, Harry snuck a look at the underside of his forearm, where the angry burn was still giving off a faint heat, the skin blackening around the edge of the welt. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Tom Riddle was watching, and forced himself to look up again, fixing his gaze on Slughorn’s mouth, which was moving as he said words that Harry’s brain couldn’t quite translate._

Voldemort opened his eyes. Of course the boy was only in class, though Voldemort had hoped for sunlight, and perhaps a bit of flying. A view of the sky was pleasant when it wasn’t _his_ body that was at risk for no purpose beyond a bit of pointless recreation.

But he was here, in Hogwarts; Voldemort thought of his burns and his mental state and recalled vaguely the process by which he’d once initiated reluctant recruits. It had been a long time since he’d considered it, but of course that’s what pained the boy. First the burns, and then...well, nothing more. Before then, he’d be under Voldemort’s wand. He thought of the wound on the boy’s arm—he could dig his fingertips into it when he cast; the physical pain would help ensure whatever flimsy Occlumency his accidental magic threw between them would be no barrier. Voldemort double-checked the class schedule that Dippet gave to Andrews and which Voldemort had extracted from his pocket.

The next day, his first class was sixth-year Slytherin.

 

 

**Chapter 5.4**

**Reality and Expectation Are Often Incongruous; or, Voldemort’s plans go awry**

Harry’s forehead was throbbing and he had no way of knowing why—Voldemort or Tom Riddle, it had to be, but which? Before the Time Room, he’d seen through Voldemort’s eyes in his dreams, but never since. It could be Tom Riddle? But when the boy had watched critically while Malfoy pressed his wand, made hot as a firebrand with some muttered dark spell, into Harry’s wrist, he hadn’t felt so much as a surge of agony despite Riddle’s obvious delight.

Now they’d healed him and done it again. He hadn’t even bothered struggling this time, since at least the first night, they kept their word: a scream from Harry, a night’s safe passage for him and his belongings. Not that he’d slept for a moment. A combination of the pain in his arm, and the thought of so many future murderers snoring softly just feet away, kept him rigid and awake.

But this night, Tom Riddle looked up from an inspection of his fingernails when Harry, who’d held out as long as he could, cracked and cried out. He’d held back until Lucius rolled the smoldering wand up his inner arm and into the crease of his elbow.

“Very good,” Tom Riddle murmured, inhaling deeply as though the singed-flesh aroma in the shower stall was a heady perfume. “This evening, Goyle may heal you immediately. We have our toll, but as you’ll learn, I have no interest in cruelty for its own sake.”

Harry snorted at that, but because his eyes were watering profusely, it might have sounded more like a sniffle. Tom Riddle nodded magnanimously as though Harry had thanked him.

Goyle was so proficient at healing a burn, Harry had to wonder how many had paid the toll before him. Was this how all his new dorm-mates spent their first nights at Hogwarts: scalded by Riddle’s wand long before they knew even basic spellwork sufficient to oppose him? Harry could easily imagine Tom Riddle at five, practicing his sadistic tactics on alley cats.

Despite his vehemence, his aching head, and the knowledge that he might be smothered in his sleep, this evening Harry couldn’t resist the tide of exhaustion. It came over him almost the moment his head hit his pillow.

His dreams were strange, vague, and circuitous. He certainly felt as though he’d been plunged into Voldemort’s head, but without the benefit of sense and sight. Only the intense well of his dark emotions.

When he woke, he was nearly late for DADA, and his scar pulsed worse than ever with a searing heat. Goyle waited for Harry, because Harry wasn’t supposed to know the location of the classroom yet. When they burst into the room with seconds to spare, Harry saw Tom Riddle shaking hands with the adult in the room who was presumably their Professor.

“Is that how Riddle begins every lesson?” Harry nearly caught the professor’s eye and winced when a lance of pain passed knife-like through his skull.

“No, Potter,” Goyle muttered. “This is the new DADA Professor. He started today.”

Harry wasn’t listening carefully. He sat by Goyle and reached into his pocket for a quill, preparing to at least pretend to take notes while willing the class to end quickly. Whatever its cause, the pain in his forehead was going to keep him from retaining a single word in this lecture.

The Professor took roll, and Harry had to get a firm kick under the table from Goyle to even register that his name had been called. He tried to pay more attention as the Professor worked his way to the end of the alphabet, then opened a scroll and looked it over with a frown.

“I’ve reviewed Professor Merrythought’s materials, and from what I understand your classes were disrupted at the end of last term, so you didn’t complete the chapter on forbidden rituals.”

The Professor looked up from the scroll at Harry, and their eyes locked.

For a strange, suspended moment, the pain in Harry’s head completely subsided. Then it returned with a vengeance, as the Professor’s mouth curved in a wry smile.

“Yes, Mr. Potter? Do you have a particular interest in rituals?”

Harry blinked. “No, Professor.” He looked down and wrote a few random words on his parchment.

The _new_ Professor, Goyle had said. He turned his head, caught Goyle’s eye, and hissed, “When did he get here, then?”

“Some time quite late last night, I expect, since he wasn’t at the Great Hall this morning.”

The pain in his scar, which he felt more intensely now than ever. And also, the coincidence, that the very last time he’d felt it in this unexpected way in Hogwarts, it had been in this very room with Professor Quirrell…

It couldn’t be. But if it was…

Harry got to his feet.

“M’sick,” Harry muttered to Goyle, sure he was green enough to convince him. “Need the infirmary.”

“Do you—”

“I know the way,” Harry said tersely, and started back down the aisle between the two rows of tables and chairs as fast as he could walk.

“Potter?” called the Professor—or Voldemort’s disguise, whoever he was—but Harry didn’t turn. He walked faster, instead, but the doors snapped shut before he could reach them.

“Mr. Potter,” came the voice a second time, and Harry felt another wave of crippling pain from his scar. “You’ll need to ask permission to leave my class,” he added, his voice nearer than it had been. Harry slowly turned, deciding that rather than die with his back to Voldemort, he’d face him. He’d have his chin up. He’d—

Harry’s hand flexed but before he could draw his wand, the man held out his hand and murmured an _Expelliarmus_. The Holly wand flew to him with traitorous ease. When a few of the students, including Gregory Goyle, sat up with soft exclamations at the sight of a Professor disarming a student, the man at the front of the classroom rolled Harry’s wand between his thumb and fingertips and divided a look across the entire room.

“In my class, drawing a wand without being specifically instructed to do so will result in said wand remaining in my pocket for the remainder of class. As for you, Mr. Potter, we won’t be letting you escape so easily.” They locked eyes. Though the man’s were brown and ordinary Harry could swear he noticed a faint red cast. The other students fell into a watchful silence.

“I’m ill,” Harry breathed, on the weak residual hope that all his suspicions were untrue.

“I think you’ll survive until the end of my class. Please, have a seat.”

Harry dropped into the nearest empty chair without even noticing whom he was sitting beside. He couldn’t look away from his wand in the man’s left hand, the fingers thick and dusted with hair, but the nimble way they twirled it against his thigh quite familiar.

“Potter, honestly,” hissed his classmate. He glanced over to identify her, but couldn’t remember her name. She had close-cropped dark red hair and light blue eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of a first impression?”

It couldn’t be. This couldn’t be Voldemort, calmly teaching a Hogwarts DADA class. Voldemort would have killed Harry straightaway, probably the moment he’d taken Harry’s wand. A few sixteen-year-old witnesses would hardly impede him.

The unassuming older man at the front of the class turned, met Harry’s eye, and then dropped it to Harry’s wand, which he turned consideringly under his gaze, as though closely inspecting it and liking what he saw.

“What a curious wand,” he said, taking his own from its holster and rolling them together in one hand. “Doesn’t look like mine, but they do seem to have a certain quality in common, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Potter?”

The other students exchanged quizzical looks.

Harry’s hammering heart sank. Uncertainty was frightening, and had made him want to flee, but certainty rooted him to his desk. He had no wand, he had no friends; what was there for him to do? Except hope that Voldemort misstepped sometime between now and the moment he actually chose to kill Harry. Which seemed too horrible to be an option, but it was the only one Harry had and it had served him strangely well before. Well enough that he let himself entertain the feeble hope his strange, periodic luck would save him again.

And really, Harry thought he should be better at staring down death with dignity. He’d had plenty of opportunities to practice. But he just felt a sick dread, that this would be how he’d go, stuck in this frightening shadow of the school he loved, far from his friends. That was what pushed him to the edge—the thought of Ron and Hermione—their faces, the way they’d taught him the dizzying feeling of being cared for—

Harry couldn’t think about any of that and keep the valve closed on his tears. Maybe it didn’t matter if he died sobbing or solemn, but the bit of pride and vanity he had left made him prefer the latter.

The class went on, and the part of Harry’s mind that could still notice what was going on around him observed with rising hysteria how easily Voldemort engaged the Slytherins, as though they were a pit of young vipers and he the gifted charmer.

When the class ended and the Slytherins filed out, Harry leapt up and tried to go with them, but a lilting call from Voldemort—”Oh, Goyle, Malfoy, Potter has forgotten his wand, if you could help him over?”—had Goyle and Malfoy seizing Harry by each of his arms and towing him back toward the desk, so eager were they to assist their new favorite Professor, while Harry struggled as though he was being taken to Azkaban.

“Potter, what in Merlin’s name,” muttered Malfoy when Goyle, alarmed, loosened his grip enough for Harry to break fee. Then Voldemort was there, and he _did_ something, because suddenly Harry couldn’t speak or move his feet. Malfoy and Goyle looked at him askance, bobbed their heads at Voldemort, and filed back out of the room. The doors closed behind them, and in Harry’s ears they sounded like a gavel, announcing the final absence of leave to hope.

“Oh, Potter,” Voldemort said, and his voice was still too rough, but now sounded much more like him. “It must discourage you, that the prophecy will not be fulfilled in your favor, despite how far you have come in its pursuit.”

Harry wasn’t sure what Voldemort meant. Since that night at the Ministry, he’d barely given the prophecy another moment’s thought. But he was distracted by the effort of keeping his chin up, and wondering if any of his mother’s magic was lingering here between them and Voldemort’s own curse might half-kill him a second time.

They stood close, but didn’t touch. Harry didn’t know if this was mercy, or just Voldemort wanting Harry to hear and understand all his final taunts. He had pocketed the wands at some point during his lecture, but now he reached into his robes and drew them out again, and Harry watched, nauseous with the thought that his wand was so near and yet so impossibly distant. He thought of reaching for it—why not—but knew he’d have only one chance and waited for a better moment. It was still just outside his reach…

“I admit, at one time I thought you were a much worthier adversary than you have proven to be,” Voldemort continued, still studying their sister wands, an edge of humor in his voice. “But perhaps you are only an unremarkable boy, after all. It should be a relief, but instead I find I will be strangely disappointed if that is the case.”

He looked up, and now Harry was sure he saw it, a red flame in the midst of the brown, boring into him and lighting up the ceaseless throb of his scar with a fresh assault. “Shall we satisfy my curiosity, then, once and for all?”

He raised the wands, and cast with them both: “ _Legilimens_!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't already, PLEASE note the updated tags.
> 
> WARNINGS IN THIS CHAPTER: non-con, torture and gore
> 
> Thank you to trashgoblinwizardparty for beta reading!

****

**Chapter 6.1**

**That Which Is Most Unexpected Yet Quite Obvious In Hindsight; or, Voldemort is surprised**

The inside of Harry Potter’s mind felt much different when Voldemort had to force his way in. He’d visited often since mid-summer, uninvited but peacefully. So often that he almost expected the same sense he was surrounded by pleasant feeling and a certain...ease of being. Instead, it was fraught with walls and painful sharp edges, a combination of natural defenses and the boy’s frantic, reasonably powerful magic, both trying to beat back an intruder. 

He broke though with a combination of skill and sheer force, vaguely aware of how the space of the boy’s mind shuddered around him, the way a mind did when the person it belonged to was experiencing the accompanying physical pain of the process. Voldemort wasn’t interested in preservation _per se_ , but he needed to keep the environment stable while he was there, and he was prepared to be within for some time, considering the extent of his curiosity. Therefore, he proceeded with some delicacy. Rather than blowing doors off their hinges, he pried them open. Rather than obliterate defenses, he pressed through them. 

He perused at leisure, studying one memory carefully, then rushing past a dozen more, noting with a puzzled fascination the gaps in the boy’s knowledge of basic things such as civics and history, and a total absence of curiosity regarding what he didn’t know. Occasionally he came upon a moment which the boy must have held particularly sacred, because he was met with another hostile wave of resistance to bat aside. These he examined at first then began to overlook when he found they were nothing worthwhile, anyway. Moments of hunger and desperation in a dark cupboard; the sneering face of a fat Muggle man and a child that resembled him so closely he had to be the son; the distinctive aristocratic face of a Black, smiling warmly and putting his hand briefly on Potter’s head. 

He found less time with Dumbledore than he’d expected. There were no indications of _Obliviate_ , or other concealing spell, and certainly no formal Occlumency. Voldemort pushed past thought and memory to find the deepest elements, something the boy didn’t _know_ , but which he _was_ , and which could explain why Sybill Trelawney would one day receive a prophecy that labeled this mere child Voldemort’s doom. 

Nothing. Nothing. Magical strength, yes, but nothing _extraordinary_. Nothing _special_. Except... 

Voldemort recalled the first moment he’d realized he could perform magic. He’d suffered a brief moment of disbelief, because even as a child he’d understood Possible and Impossible, and knew that a rock soaring toward the back of the Matron’s head at a thought was Impossible in every way. But then that moment passed and he felt _certain_. And, a sense of ownership. Recognition. 

This web of feeling felt very much like the one Voldemort experienced upon discovering his Horcrux deep inside Harry Potter’s mind. 

He withdrew so suddenly the boy, who had been screaming quite impressively, fainted and collapsed against Voldemort’s chest. 

Voldemort grimaced, but contained the immediate urge to shove him away. After all, he was...he was his _Horcrux _.__

___His_ Horcrux. _ _

__Voldemort bent his knees to get a better hold of the boy, his mind racing. He should have known—but how could he?—was it possible that such a thing should happen on accident?_ _

__But now he better recalled what had happened in that fraction of a heartbeat between casting his curse at the infant Harry Potter and its rebound. And wasn’t that _Avada Kedavra_ , at its most basic: a severing curse, but for soul rather than body? _ _

__It might explain how his bodily death that night had been an agony. Not unlike the rituals for the true Horcruxes._ _

__He picked Potter up. The Auror’s body was strong, conveniently. He had to conceal the boy before the next group of students arrived. Voldemort held him against his chest and thought, faintly, that he was frightfully thin, his eyes underscored with deep purple bruises from exhaustion and, presumably, pain._ _

__Voldemort marveled that Potter could contain the soul piece, unsecured as it was. It must strain against the bounds of his skull when Voldemort was so near. Voldemort had wondered at length what caused the boy to continue to feel pain in his presence, and agony at their physical contact, even when Voldemort took his blood and was no longer burdened by the same symptoms._ _

__But no, impossibly, and yet _of course_ , Potter had been _his_ all along. _ _

__He stunned the boy and left him on the bed in his chambers, then compartmentalized his mind through the next class, his last of the morning, while thinking furiously through his present options. He’d intended to stay a while, utilize Slughorn’s connections and perhaps Dippet’s as well to establish, if he could, what possibilities existed for him in this time. Also, he intended to determine the likelihood of a return to the present. Hogwarts had an unrivaled staff library after all._ _

__But in his original plan, all of that came _after_ dealing with Harry Potter, and now… _ _

__He thought of the trunks. But…_ _

__He would prefer not to put the boy inside one. Something deep and uncompromising told him it was not to be done. It was the thought of Potter on a broomstick in the sky, or the way he delighted in ridiculous things, such as the small luxury of a bed with pillows, in light of all that cupboard-based rearing. Voldemort could have killed him, but to plunge him into darkness and forget him there...no._ _

__He did not dwell upon these odd notions, except to think, dismissively, that refusing to abuse a Horcrux was not the same thing as philanthropy._ _

__When the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor fourth years were gone, he nearly flew to the door to his rooms, wherein Potter still slept, of course, unmoving._ _

__He conjured a chair, shackled the boy to it, and woke him._ _

__Potter came to slowly at first, then registered Voldemort and at once became fully tense and alert. He scanned the room with an admirable instinct for strategy and escape rather than resignation, his narrow chest heaving in panic._ _

__Voldemort held the boy’s wand instead of his, though he hadn’t intended to draw it over the other. They both felt comfortable, and willing, in his hand. “I brought you here so we might reach an understanding,” he began. Potter’s eyes widened, and Voldemort assumed he was recalling the graveyard._ _

__“An understanding,” Potter echoed dubiously. “About what? How you’ll kill me?”_ _

__“No. I may yet have need of you. And until your further usefulness—or lack thereof—is determined, you shall behave. You shall tell no one who I am, where we come from, or _when_. You shall continue to play the role Mary Potter and Dumbledore invented for you: a poor Pureblood cousin of Mary Potter, taken in from your modest hamlet and sponsored by her good will.” _ _

__Harry looked confused, but mostly angry. “So you want me to do what I’ve already been doing.”_ _

__“Yes,” Voldemort confirmed. “And in addition, I want you to obey any other order I care to give you.”_ _

__Potter snorted, scorn all over his face. “You ought to kill me. I’m not going to take your orders.”_ _

__Voldemort cocked his head with a knowing smirk. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. In fact, I don’t think I’ll waste my time doing _anything_ to _you_. I understand you now, you see. I’ve seen all you dread and all you value, and you care pathetically little for yourself. Others, however... I can’t pry the fingers off your Mudblood friend or carve the freckles out of your Blood Traitor friend’s hide. But in your case, I don’t believe it really matters. You’d obey to spare your worst enemy from my pound of flesh for each of your transgressions. Oh, I see that stubborn look, but we both know it’s true. Perhaps a demonstration is in order?” _ _

__He waved the holly wand and the trunk which contained Andrews opened, tipped onto its side and spilled the Auror out. He had only been locked in for twelve hours, but he recoiled from the lamplight as he rolled to his hands and knees, and groaned something about “water” before Voldemort cast a second time, and a chair to match Harry’s appeared, and the bounds of _Incarcerous_ pinned Andrews to it, his head lolling to one side. _ _

__“W-what are you doing?” Potter stammered, struggling against the ropes again, so fiercely Voldemort adjusted their tautness with his wand, satisfied when Harry yelped and went still._ _

__“Educating you. We can’t pretend you learned a thing from my excellent lecture earlier this morning, but I’ll sacrifice my lunch hour to this substitute lesson.” He roused Andrews with an _Evenerate_ then aimed a gentle _Aguamenti_ at his mouth. He sputtered and winced when the stream struck his cheek, then opened his mouth eagerly and craned his neck to catch every drop. _ _

__“Most people your age,” Voldemort began, falling into the cadence and demeanor of his flawless disguise, “look down on those who are broken by physical torture. But that attitude is informed by the arrogance of youth. Unless the victim can terminate himself first, no secret, nor loyalty is safe if the interrogator knows his craft. And that’s _without_ advanced Legilimency.” _ _

__He saw the boy’s tense gaze flicker at the last word, and realized Potter didn’t know what it meant. Honestly, the curriculum at Hogwarts was riddled with holes._ _

__“To break the will entirely is a subtler art, and not one I have ever had patience for. But fortunately, for purposes of this lesson, subtlety is not our aim.”_ _

__“Who is that boy?” Andrews stirred weakly in his chair, as though noticing Harry for the first time. “You sick son of a bitch. Is _this_ why you wanted to get into the school?” _ _

__Voldemort considered silencing Andrews, but later his screams would be instructive, so he refrained and continued where he’d left off._ _

__“Do you know _Exsanguina_?” Voldemort asked Andrews, who squinted without recognition at the title of the spell. However, he was behaving too stubbornly to answer a question. It was common for captives to cling to the little bit of freedom that remained to them, and either scream or fall silent. Both urges seemed to stem from that same resisting impulse. _ _

__“It’s meant to drain game of all its blood,” Voldemort explained. “It’s too delicate for a duel, so it’s one of those practical spells which aren’t often diverted for use in violence. But here you are, bound before me and as helpless as livestock. Which makes it very easy for me to draw runes on your skin.”_ _

__Voldemort applied a delicate _Diffindo_ to the shoulder seam of Andrews’s left robe sleeve, and the fabric pooled around his upper arm where the conjured ropes were. Voldemort then took a wax pastel from a small wooden box on the tea table he’d arranged with this moment in mind, conjured a gleaming silver knife, and carefully sharpened the pastel’s blunt edge while Andrews, eyes fixed on the knife, went slightly green. __

__“Don’t,” Harry said, a note of pleading in his voice, and swallowed and said again, with more force, “don’t.”_ _

__Voldemort drew his yew wand and traced the air around Andrews’s silhouette thoughtfully, shuffling through his favorite curses for the most satisfying option considering the setting and audience. “Now, Harry. There will be a not-so-distant moment when what I ask of you will seem like more than you can do, or say, or give, or abstain from. And in that moment, I want you to have a _vivid_ recollection of why you should always choose the option that will please me. No matter what.” _ _

__Harry was crying now, silently but steadily, a stream of tears that was collecting along his jaw and dripping onto his chest. Each drop of warm saltwater that made contact with the conjured rope sizzled and evaporated._ _

__Voldemort leaned over Andrews to begin applying the runes, and wrinkled his nose, cast a cleaning spell, and tried again._ _

__“Honestly, Auror Andrews,” he murmured. “You look as if you’ve been in that trunk a month, rather than less than a day.” He heard Harry make a stifled sound and finished the rune pattern, touched his wand tip to the skin below the band of marks, and murmured, “ _Exsanguina._ ” _ _

__Andrews, who had been tense all over, couldn’t contain a quiet whimper of anticipation, but then his rigid expression eased to one of confusion when the spell caused him no pain. The skin of his arm tightened against the bones and turned blue._ _

__“Your veins shouldn’t collapse before we finish, but if they do, you’re likely to lose the entire arm.” He met Andrews’s blank gaze and twirled the knife, tracing a neat circle in the bloodless skin of his bicep like a protractor. Andrews jumped and winced, but aside from a sting, he wouldn’t be feeling much pain._ _

__Voldemort made several long incisions radiating from the first one, a sunburst of sorts, and now he began to peel the skin back. Auror Andrews’s steely resolve crumbled in an instant._ _

__“There are few pains worse than being flayed,” he explained over his shoulder to Potter, raising his voice so that he could be heard over Andrews’s frantic cries. “And without blood, it’s very neat and methodical. I’ve always enjoyed it. The human body is such fascinating territory, and in my experience, without blood or skin, every body is a work of art. Even yours, Andrews.” He had degloved all that was visible above the _Incarcerous_ bindings and below the runes. _ _

__“Right now, I could stab Andrews in the heart, and offer to heal the heart or the arm, and he’d beg for the arm.”_ _

__Voldemort leaned forward and blew on the quivering, white-marbled muscle, pink and curved, that his ministrations had bared, and Andrews’s ongoing, hoarser and hoarser screams hit a new pitch. He neatly bisected a portion of the bicep so he could pull it back from the tendon and reveal the entire curve of the tricep beneath, leaning back just in time to miss Andrews’s vomit. It was mostly bile and the water Voldemort had just given him._ _

__Then, Andrews fainted, and the room was quiet except for Potter’s ragged breaths. Voldemort met his eye._ _

__“Shall I rouse him? I find the process is much more effective with a necklace of runes and a canvas of the face, rather than the limb.”_ _

__“No, no, no, please, stop,” Harry entreated, his words rushed and his tone strained but pleading. “Please, stop. Heal him before you wake him up. And then...I promise.” Harry choked on the word; Voldemort saw what it cost. “I mean it. I’ll do as you say.”_ _

__Voldemort gazed at Harry, absently tapping his wand against his thigh. “He is a magical creature, as we all are. His latent magic will heal him, given time. And really, Harry, are you in a position to be making demands?”_ _

__“No, I’m not,” Harry said quietly. “But… _please_.” _ _

__Voldemort rewarded him with a small, magnanimous smile. “Very well.”_ _

__Voldemort healed Andrews wordlessly, for effect. The muscle he’d cut out regrew, and the skin knitted. He dropped the Auror back in his trunk to wake up naturally, and wondered about feeding him the chunk of his arm that still lay on the table like a cut of meat, and which Harry was trying not to look at._ _

__A current of air from Voldemort’s wand closed the lid of the trunk and its residual force stirred the fringe from Potter’s forehead. At the sight of his mark there, Voldemort also looked across the room until he could steady his breath._ _

__“And, should my warnings fail despite your inclination to spare others any pain, then I could keep you as I’ve elected to keep Auror Andrews.”_ _

__Potter bit the inside of his cheek, but nodded. Voldemort cast _Relashio_ , and the boy slumped against the back of the chair a half moment before stumbling to his feet. _ _

__“Now,” Voldemort said softly. “Return to your dorm and rest. I will excuse your absence.” He waved Harry’s wand and concluded the movement with a terse _Mobilio_ , and a small square of parchment where Voldemort had already scrawled a note leapt from the writing desk, folded itself into an origami crane, and darted out the window. _ _

__The boy looked dazed. His eye had fallen on the trunk where Andrews was stored._ _

__“I _hate_ you,” he said dully. _ _

__“Naturally,” Voldemort said. “So long as you fear me, also. You wouldn’t want to make me prove why you should.”_ _

__Potter walked out, his strides slow and measured, his shoulders slumped._ _

__****_ _

__Voldemort checked on him what felt like constantly through the afternoon, utilizing the handy ability he had to occupy the boy’s mind, and ground his teeth when all Harry managed to do was lie awake in his bed and stare at the ceiling._ _

__He might have to pry open the boy’s throat and pour a sleeping draught down it._ _

__****_ _

__**Chapter 6.2** _ _

**Revelations Tend to Travel in Pairs; or, Voldemort is surprised—again**

__  
__  


When his classes ended he went to the Great Hall, prevented from going into his rooms to ruminate over all the wonders of the day by the sure knowledge Dippet would expect him at every meal, and he’d already missed two.

Of course this meant he saw Potter, who was sitting apart from the other non-noble Slytherin students who’d appeared for dinner, pushing a handful of sliced potatoes around with his fork. He winced as Voldemort passed, though he was still halfway across the large room. 

Voldemort wondered again at the pain, curious as to how it must feel, but held back from the urge to visit the boy’s mind. He needed to keep himself from immediately undermining his disguise by withdrawing into a daze for even a moment with so many people there to observe. 

“Professor Andrews! Here you are!” exclaimed Dippet, reaching out to seize Voldemort’s hand and shake it heartily. “What a pleasure to have you join us.” 

He indicated the seat at his left, which Voldemort took stiffly, as he well recalled it as the chair Dumbledore would sit in if he were gracing them with his presence. 

Voldemort exchanged a polite nod with Slughorn on his other side, and studied the platter of roast beef and steamed carrots before him with limited interest. He wasn’t a picky eater; he was far too pragmatic for that. But he couldn’t stop his attention from straying to Potter, picking at his own food listlessly, with no sign he’d eaten anything at all. 

“I’ve heard wonderful reports from the students already,” Dippet was saying. Voldemort nodded with a distracted smile, pretending to be quite hungry so he wouldn’t be expected to chat. He knew Andrews would be popular. He remembered the man well enough from two years in his classes, and did recall he’d been one of the more effective teachers he’d had. But there had also been a puzzling depth to him on certain subjects, where he’d displayed curious insight for an Auror. 

He went to the staff library for a book, but chose three volumes instead of one in case anyone should suspect anything if all he borrowed were volumes on time magic. Then he went to his rooms, lit the fire, and sat down near it to read. When he couldn’t quiet his thoughts—for even _he_ tired of _constant_ plotting—a book sometimes aided him. 

But there was a tug at the edge of his subconscious that made him think _Harry_ —so he followed it. 

_Harry went into the dormitory with his shoulders slumped, hoping that if he made himself small and quiet, he might make it to his four-poster unaccosted. After what he’d just seen Voldemort do to the real Andrews, letting Malfoy’s wand scald him might be more than he could stand. His only comfort with respect to the entire situation was that he’d had a letter from Dumbledore a week before he left for Hogwarts promising he’d be back sometime in the third week of term, though not for its start as he’d hoped._

 _Dumbledore, Harry was sure, would figure out Voldemort’s secret. Harry was loathe to go to him with a direct report. He didn’t doubt Voldemort’s promise of violence, or the threat of being locked away. His only uncertainty was why Voldemort hadn’t killed him; there hadn’t been anything stopping him. Voldemort’s inaction had to have something to do with the way Voldemort invaded his mind, which still made Harry want to curl into a ball in the dark and never emerge. But he couldn’t dwell on it. He still had Tom Riddle to face._

Voldemort distanced himself from Harry’s thoughts so that he could form his own, hovering just outside the immediate thoughts of the boy’s mind, while thinking over Harry’s prediction. Of course, the boy had known a more watchful version of Dumbledore, but Voldemort doubted that the Dumbledore of this time would look upon Andrews with any additional suspicion unless he was alerted by Potter—or someone or something else—that something was amiss. 

_The other boys weren’t assembled as though they’d been waiting for Harry. They were sitting around the dormitory, or changing clothes, or teasing one another. It almost could have been a scene from Harry’s days in the Gryffindor dorms. He thought he might have finally earned a reprieve, until Tom Riddle noticed him and his stare turned assessing._

 _“Potter,” he murmured. “What_ was _that stunt this morning?” He folded his arms and leaned against his bedpost. “And then, you missed your next class. Shirking academic responsibilities is unacceptable in Slytherin House.”_

_“I was ill,” Harry snapped. He couldn’t bring himself to be deferential to Riddle. Even though he knew that his temper could lead to protracted consequences, and he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lie down behind his bed-curtains and be left alone until the next morning._

_Riddle’s stare turned icy. Voldemort sighed internally. He would have to have a word with Harry about all of this silly posturing. It was a waste of time and could negatively impact his already delicate health. But for now there was nothing to be done. He had shown disrespect before the other sixth-year Slytherins, on top of causing his House embarrassment earlier that day. Tom Riddle would punish him, and while Voldemort would prefer he refrained, he could hardly intervene even if he cared to._

_“Let’s collect Potter’s toll, shall we?”_

_The other boys immediately got to their feet, shrugged into their robes, and filed toward the door. Harry watched dispassionately, and didn’t move. Riddle cleared his throat._

_Voldemort realized what was going to happen a few moments before Harry did. And he also realized how Harry would react, and how all of this could abruptly go very badly for his Horcrux. He doubted Tom Riddle would kill one Slytherin dorm mate simply to save face in front of the others, but Voldemort’s temper at sixteen was a very delicate animal, especially in the early days after the first Horcrux was made._

_So he tested a theory. He gathered himself more tightly together within Harry’s mind, as though he was a vapor which could expand at will, and he now condensed. Then he spoke into the space around him:_ Harry, you will do as he says.

 _Harry received words in Voldemort’s voice without_ hearing _them. It reminded him of moments when a song was trapped in his mind on a loop and if he focused, he could imagine every lyric and note. Except this was much louder and more disturbing. Harry blurted aloud, “What?”_

 _Tom Riddle’s eyes went narrow and nearly black with the threat of danger, and Voldemort reiterated,_ Harry, _go_. 

Harry stood, dazed and numb at the renewed sense of helplessness, thinking with a pounding heart of the way all the glossy muscles in Andrews’ arm trembled without their necessary armor of blood and skin, and wandered after Riddle. He wondered how long it would take for him to scream today. Maybe Malfoy’s wand would make it all the way to his bicep. He knew it was pointless, he felt some measure of control over the situation when he could at least withhold the reaction they sought. 

In the bathrooms, Harry walked first into the shower stall where it had happened the first time, and the other boys followed, Abraxas already muttering over his wand. Riddle, though, looked agitated, instead of purely self-satisfied, and the novelty had obviously worn off for the rest of the group also. He heard one Nott triplet whisper to another, “Instead of just following her around all the time, maybe you should try to get in front of her and let her bump into you.” 

“All her most interesting bits are in the back,” protested the other. 

“She does have a nice arse. Maybe after you fuck her, she won’t notice if we take a turn.” 

Harry, startled out of his numb reverie by what he’d inadvertently overheard, coughed and caught himself before he swung his head all the way around to stare incredulously at the triplets. But of course, given the confines and the fact that he was more or less the center of everyone’s attention, all the Slytherins noticed. They looked either confused or knowing, depending. 

Tom Riddle didn’t look confused. 

“Oh, Potter, does the Notts’ collective lack of virtue make you uncomfortable? That’s a rather Muggle attitude, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s true what they’re saying, and you’re just a Mudblood after all.” 

Harry, on his back foot, glared at him and spat, “Don’t use that word.” 

_Riddle smiled slowly. “Are you trying to distract me, Potter? Perhaps what you truly are is_ shy _, rather than virtuous?”_

_Harry held himself very still and tried not to react. Riddle abruptly closed the distance between them, backing Harry up against the shower wall. Riddle’s hands were parting his robes, his fingertips happening to graze Harry’s waist._

“What are you…?! _” he began again, with rising hysteria, but then Voldemort “spoke” to him again._

Be still. Recall what I said to you this morning, and know it applies to _any_ disobedience.

_Harry still didn’t understand why Riddle was so close, and without even drawing his wand, until Riddle unbuttoned Harry’s trousers and reached into his pants. Then it all made sudden, sick sense, and Harry barely contained the instinct to fight or flee, which he’d never felt so strongly before that moment._

_“No one’s ever touched you before, have they?” Riddle murmured, a pleasant, distant look on his face as his long fingers very gently stroked Harry’s flaccid cock. “They’ve hurt you, but they’ve never had you quite like this.”_

_Voldemort knew that Harry was fractions of a moment away from doing something foolhardy, but could deduce no method by which to physically contain him. So he did all he could think to do._

That’s very good, _he whispered, and felt the boy shudder at the effect of Voldemort’s words washing over the edge of every thought. It shocked him into another moment of stillness, so Voldemort, encouraged, went on._ You’re doing very well. Good boy.

_Tom Riddle was not surprised when the cock he was holding twitched and began to stiffen. Voldemort, from his vantage point, rather was._

Oh, you _like_ that, don’t you? _he asked Harry._

_“No,” Harry snarled out loud, which made Tom Riddle and Voldemort both chuckle._

_“I could ask the Notts to hold you. I’m sure they’d be delighted,” he said softly, sliding his hand down to the root of Harry’s cock so that he could cup his balls, which were taut with tension, and so sensitive Harry’s inhaled a stuttering breath and felt momentarily dizzy._

Let him touch you, like a good boy, _Voldemort told Harry, more firmly. And Harry, whimpering, was still, and helpless against the sensation of being touched as he’d never been touched, even as the Notts tittered over Tom Riddle’s shoulder, and Goyle, red-faced, studied his shoes. Malfoy, with a sour look on his face, reversed the spells on his wand and let it fall to his side._

_“Relax, and it will be over soon,” Riddle was murmuring. “I can see you’re less dominant than you’d like the world to believe, aren’t you? You want to scream for me. I can tell. Oh, you must fucking hate that, mustn’t you?” He grazed the underside of Harry’s cock with his thumbnail and Harry bit his lip hard on the moan that threatened to spill from his mouth._

_“You’ll relax, and scream for me,” Riddle went on, conversationally, “or if you try to be stubborn, I_ will _let the Notts come over here and do this their way. You wouldn’t like it, and either way, I will be here looking you in the eye when you scream. Either way, your scream is for me.” He said this all quietly, matter-of-fact, his own silk robes sheer over the juncture of his legs and betraying nothing, as there was nothing to betray. His hand on Harry’s cock was nothing to him. That thought made Harry’s hips jerk so his cock ground against Riddle’s palm._

_Be a good boy, _Voldemort rephrased what he’d said on impulse before but which had the desired effect,_ and scream._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to trashgoblinwizardparty, beta extraordinaire!

**Chapter 7.1**

**Persistence and Resilience are the Best Defense to Adversity; or, Harry doesn’t give up**

Harry had heard the phrase “as though in a fog” before, and thought it described everything perfectly. It was worse than the aftermath of the graveyard, and Cedric’s death. In this, he felt on some level complicit. Betrayed by his own body, for one, and the loss of privacy of any kind, all in one day, for another. If he thought about it, he would throw up. He knew, because that was what had happened when he was alone in the bathroom, after Riddle finished with him and led off the rest of the Slytherins. 

Now he let the fog carry him, because it was safer there, insulated from any immediate feeling. Though he thought he would probably fail all his courses, based upon the frustrated frowns he kept seeing on Professors’ faces when he was asked a question, or sat listlessly staring at his wand when everyone else was doing practical work. Not that he cared. 

He had expected his punishment that evening, but Riddle was taking evening tea with Professor Slughorn, and the other sixth-year boys pretended he wasn’t there. That was fine with Harry. He closed his bed-curtains and lay behind them, but the fog wouldn’t assist him with sleep. It did carry him through the night, and he slept fitfully once or twice, dreaming vague dreams of Ron and Hermione and waking up with the grit of dried tears on his cheeks. 

He got out of bed before anyone else rose, and used the showers. He’d hoped that he could stay in the fog here, too, but it couldn’t protect him from his visceral reaction to the setting. By the time he had hastily washed his hair and half-dried his skin, shivering in the chill of the stone corridor, he was as raw and sick as he’d felt just after it had happened. 

Wrapped in a robe, he leaned against the wall and tried not to hyperventilate, and that’s how Marigold Nott found him. 

“Potter,” she said, looking uneasily at his bare feet and ankles, which were dripping water. “Are you abstaining?” 

He stared at her. “What?” 

“Foregoing magic, in light of the death of the Dragonette?” 

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Someone died?” 

“Yes,” Marigold replied, amused. “Nine hundred and eleven years ago. In any case, I’m not her descendent, so. Here.” She pointed her wand at his legs, which were, abruptly, quite dry and vaguely warm. Harry startled, then tried to smile, which must have looked very unpleasant because Marigold recoiled a bit at the sight of his curled lip and upper teeth. 

“Oh, Potter,” she sighed. “Why don’t we go to the Great Hall? I’ll wait for you while you change.” 

Harry hesitated, but it wasn’t as though he had a better option. And the idea of being verbally needled by Marigold for an hour or so sounded like the best time he’d had since...well, since the last time she’d done it, honestly. He nodded, and Marigold gave him a final narrow look and nodded back. 

Somehow, the dormitory was still mercifully dark, and Harry took his clothing and school robes under his arm and changed hastily in his bed before stealing back out into the common room while his dorm-mates slept on. Even Riddle’s curtains remained drawn. Harry wasn’t religious, but he silently repeated a sentence he’d heard Ron mutter once or twice, generally expressing gratitude to the benevolent ghost of Merlin. 

“Why are you up so early?” Harry thought to ask, after he and Marigold left the silent, still-dark common room. 

“Like you, I don’t have many friends in my dormitory,” she said simply. “I suppose it’s not going very well for you with Riddle and my sadistic cousins, is it? Oh, Merlin, and Malfoy, too.” 

He was startled by her candor, and unsure whether to reply in kind, so he just shrugged. Marigold was watching him not with sympathy, but with a sort of exasperated disgust that she explained in her next comment. 

“You really should have been a Gryffindor, I think. What on Earth possessed you to choose Slytherin?” 

Harry thought indignantly of the Watch Fire; however, that had only shown him a _possible_ future, but was not an invention just to trap him. And presumably, in order to give rise to that possibility, some part of him had to have been willing to choose Slytherin. Or maybe in every eventuality, Harry was somehow forced to say it. And what had forced him? Was it simply fate, and what was fate? Some thinking being, like a god, or just a mechanism by which time reinforced itself? 

Harry’s head hurt, and he wished for the fog he’d occupied yesterday. But he knew he wasn’t really cut out for denial and passivity, and supposed he was lucky it had lasted as long as it had. 

“Potter,” Marigold sighed. “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but you’re terribly pathetic, you know. It’s like seeing a starved puppy that’s been kicked a few times, too. Can’t you ask Dippet to reconsider your Sorting?” 

Harry looked at her sharply. “What?” 

She shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s happened, once or twice? I mean, usually it’s to get into Slytherin, not out of it. But people have claimed they had a fever, or a hallucination, or something else that perplexed the Hat. I looked into it, in case I didn’t Sort properly.” 

Harry could easily imagine a not-yet-eleven-year-old Marigold, researching obscure histories of Hogwarts, and was struck with such a powerful wave of longing for Hermione he had to bite the inside of his cheek to maintain his composure. 

“Honestly, Potter, what could I do to you that’s any worse than the boys in your dormitory?” 

The resemblance to his dear friend banished, Harry more easily got his emotions under control and considered Marigold’s advice with a clearer head. He knew he should suspect some kind of Slytherin trick, but really couldn’t see her angle if it was true. And anyway, what did he care if he was being manipulated, if there was the slightest possibility he could avoid spending another night in the Slytherin dungeons? Marigold was right, in a way. He wouldn’t lose much by trusting her, because he had little to lose. 

“He takes appointments just before the first classes, sometimes,” Marigold added. “Walk me the rest of the way to the Great Hall first, then see if he’s in.” 

“I don’t need to be summoned?” Harry asked, remembering that whenever he’d gone to the Headmaster’s office before, he’d either been escorted or invited with a note that included the password. 

Marigold looked puzzled. “No, Potter. Talking to students is the Headmaster’s whole job. Why would you need to be summoned?” 

This was a very different Hogwarts than the one Harry had known, that was for sure. 

Marigold now safely delivered, Harry retraced his steps to the staircase and from there the entrance point to the Headmaster’s office, which was curiously standing open, just as Marigold had alluded. 

The office was empty, except of course for Dippet, who was returning a vial to a small wall-mounted Potions cabinet. 

“Mr. Potter! Good morning!” Dippet smiled absently at Harry and closed the cabinet. “What can I help you with?” 

“Well,” Harry began, immediately wishing he’d planned a better argument. “I was thinking that perhaps Slytherin wasn’t the right choice. As a House. For me.” 

Dippet smiled in a kindly way. “Yes, I suspected you might feel that way.” 

Harry felt hope rise in his chest. “Then could I choose again?” 

Dippet laughed. “Oh, no. With a few rare exceptions, and none in my tenure, I’m afraid a Sorting is quite final, however it may occur.” He sobered and looked intently at Harry. “Do you have anything to report to me, Potter? I know Slytherin hazing can get a bit out of hand. Perhaps Tom Riddle might be a friendly face in your dormitory? He probably wouldn’t presume that you need his help, but if you ask for it I’m sure he’d be eager.” 

Harry felt intensely nauseous, and shook his head rapidly without trusting himself to speak. 

Dippet was, of course, unconvinced, but he nodded without pressing further. “Perhaps joining an extracurricular might assist you in making friends? I overheard you tell Mr. Goyle you’re a flier!” 

Harry didn’t like the thought of playing for Slytherin at all, but he did feel less ill when he considered being allowed a bit of flying. “I’m a little out of practice,” he hedged. 

Dippet beamed. “I’ll write to your aunt, and see if she can send along your broom. Your uncle was quite an athlete, as I recall. Until then, perhaps you could borrow mine.” 

Harry was startled. “Oh, but Sir, a school broom would suit me fine.” 

Dippet seemed puzzled. “I’m afraid the school doesn’t own any brooms. Liability concerns. But mine was recently serviced, though I no longer care to use it.” He reached beneath his desk and produced an enormous broomstick that Harry stared at for a full second before recalling his manners, smiling, and accepting it. 

“Thanks, Professor,” he said, bracing the broomhandle against his shoulder to better bear its weight. 

“A Seeker, I bet?” Dippet asked, giving Harry a once-over and then nodding to himself. He reached beneath the desk again and produced a snitch that seemed to have rusted into a stasis, its wings outstretched and unmoving, the gold surface mottled with dark red. 

“Might have to give it a little shake,” Dippet advised, dropping it into the crook of Harry’s elbow. “You have an hour before your first class, I believe, if you’d like a little flying.” 

“Thank you, Sir,” Harry said weakly, and struggled back down the stairs with the broom and snitch, the latter stirring weakly against his elbow as though it wanted to fly but couldn’t quite bring itself to move. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he bumped into someone who turned out to be a Nott triplet. 

“Watch it, Potter,” he said, and Harry, stumbling backward, dropped the snitch. It hit the stone floor with a sharp sound, which seemed to wake it up, because it abruptly zoomed up off the floor and directly into Nott’s outstretched hand. 

“Give that back,” Harry snapped, though Nott hadn’t exactly taken it. 

Nott blinked stupidly at him. “What?” He looked at the snitch, and then at Harry, who had dropped the clunky broom, drawn his wand and shoved it under Nott’s chin. 

“Give. It. Back.” 

Nott’s eyes narrowed mockingly, and he opened his mouth—but what he intended to say, Harry didn’t wait to find out. 

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” he incanted, and with his wand tip against Nott’s skin, as well as causing the unfamiliar wand to fly into his free hand, he gave the other boy a bad shock that made him yelp. It was inadvertent, but Harry felt a vicious satisfaction, so much so that he thought of casting a stinging hex for good measure. Thought it so hard that he cast it wordlessly, and Nott’s next sound was more of a howl. 

“Potter!” exclaimed a second voice, and Harry spun around with his wand aimed at whomever it was. It was another triplet, this one holding up his hands cautiously. 

“Jerome, give him the Snitch, you dumb fuck,” muttered the newcomer, and Jerome, still clutching his throat and looking at Harry as though he’d grown a second head, tossed the Snitch at Harry as though it was burning his hand. Harry caught it in his left hand, and kept his wand pointed at the other triplet, whose hand hovered over his wand holster. 

“You’re not fast enough,” he told the other triplet calmly, and when his fingers flexed in the direction of his wand hilt anyway, Harry cast a second wordless stinging hex, this time on purpose. The hex left a burst of red on the triplet’s jaw and made him stumble backward, but he jerked his hands over his head and well away from his wand. 

“Anything the matter, boys?” Headmaster Dippet now stood at the entryway to his office. Harry, as though awoken from a dream, dropped his wand to his side and backpedaled hastily from the Notts, bending to snatch up the broom. 

“Just messing about, Headmaster,” Jerome hurried to say, while his brother nodded adamantly. Headmaster Dippet tugged on his sideburn, looking weary, and nodded and retreated back up his spiral staircase. 

“Sorry, Potter,” said the Notts. 

They hadn’t done anything, really. But they’d also done something to Harry, watching him in that bathroom. And in their limited acquaintance, he had never known them to get out of bed and traipse around the halls for early morning exercise, so it was obvious why they “just happened” to be nearby. 

For a wild, violent moment, Harry imagined making them bleed with magic; or writhe on the ground under _Crucio_. And in the next moment, horrified by his own thoughts and the accompanying, welling feeling in his chest, he turned an abrupt about-face and all but sprinted down the hallway. 

Harry navigated the corridors and stairs in a blur, feeling the threat of tears just behind his eyes, refusing to let them go. When he reached the doors he mounted the broom almost before he was truly outside, and it spasmed a moment between his legs, like a sleepy horse that had just been asked to gallop, before it gathered its energy and sped skyward. 

The broom was all unrefined, raw power, and Harry had to adjust hastily from the memory of his nimble Firebolt. When he and the broom found symbiosis, he leaned over it, reached into his pocket for the docile Snitch, then threw it away from him as hard as he could. 

The Snitch first dropped several feet like a stone, its wings slow and stiff, then caught some sort of breeze or thermal, angled into a glide, and rushed off with long, powerful strokes of its oblong wings. It was as though the modern snitch was a hummingbird, and Harry chased an eagle. He followed the snitch so high it felt like he could comb the clouds, the old broom straining to keep up, then dove steadily back down over the emerald canopy of the Forbidden Forest. Harry drew up cautiously as they got nearer and nearer the treetops, but the Snitch had no such reservations; it disappeared between their branches and did not return. 

Harry hovered, uncertain, for a while. His heartbeat pounded noisily in his ears, and he was filled with an intensely morose feeling that he _knew_ wasn’t proportionate to how he should feel about misplacing a Snitch that wasn’t even his. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to parse his emotions, only to be led by them. So he made an abrupt decision, and a descended into the Forest after his quarry. 

The Forest was unnaturally dark; it seemed like the sunlight should do more to penetrate the dense leaves and illuminate the foliage beneath. In the gloom, Harry flew slowly a few feet above the ground, weaving between trunks and hunting for the dull gleam of the Snitch, while the analogy _like a needle in a haystack_ played on a loop in the back of his mind. 

Just as he considered giving up, however, the Snitch sped past his ear and he resumed the chase, dodging trunks and branches while the occasional bramble or bush seemed to reach up and snatch at his trailing robes. He even heard, once or twice, a snarling or snapping sound that, given the nature of the Forest’s inhabitants, should have frightened him, but reason had fled Harry. He felt the opposite of untouchable, but also dispassionate at the thought of being maimed or killed. _Let them try_ , something inside him cried, and he pressed the broom so hard he heard the whining sound that preceded the cracking of wood under strain. Still, Harry didn’t slow, not until he inched nearer the Snitch—noting in his peripheral vision, the trees had opened into a clearing and the sun was pouring over him, but he didn’t care, his eyes on the Snitch and the Snitch alone, until his fingertips finally grazed its hard metal casing, a moment before it was cupped in his palm. 

Then Harry looked where he was headed, saw the much-too-close-and-quickly-getting-nearer tree, and threw himself sideways off the broom at the last moment. 

“Are you okay?” exclaimed someone, and Harry emerged from a momentary daze to find himself staring up into the intensely concerned face of a boy with dark hair, brown eyes, and a Hufflepuff crest on his robes. 

“You do know it’s just in games that you need to be that committed to the Snitch,” added a second voice, and a miniaturized version of the first face appeared above Harry, this one looking disapproving where the other continued to be worried. 

Harry gathered all his strength and levered himself up onto his elbows. “The broom…?” 

“It’s all right,” offered a third Hufflepuff, this one tall, willowy, and with dark brown curls swept into a high ponytail. He held the cumbersome broom out before him with both hands as proof. It did seem to be intact. 

“Why were you in the Forest? Were you looking for us?” 

“Hush, Alvin,” said the older brother—because there was no other explanation for their resemblance—to the younger one. “There is such a thing as a coincidence.” 

The younger boy huffed. Meanwhile, Harry looked around the clearing and saw that there were about a dozen Hufflepuff students staring at him, and amongst them was a haphazardly restrained Flaming Vera Vine. Harry remembered Neville once exclaiming over an illustration in their textbook, and bemoaning the fact that all fire-breathing, carnivorous plants were banned in Wizarding Britain. 

Harry blinked. “Is that really a—?” 

“Flaming Vera Vine,” confirmed the curly-haired boy, who had walked over to crouch beside Harry and set the broom on the grass. 

“The sap has outstanding restorative properties,” said the freckle-faced boy. “Would you like one of us to walk you to the infirmary?” 

“I’ve had worse,” Harry assured him. “I’m Harry, by the way.” 

The boy’s frown transitioned abruptly into a smile. “Oh, we know. Harry Potter, the mysterious new Slytherin. I’m Oswin Scamander, and this is Alvin.” He nodded at his brother, and even in the brief glance in the younger boy’s direction, his friendly brown eyes turned softer still with fondness. 

Oswin then pointed out all the other assembled Hufflepuffs, and Harry smiled helplessly, nodding at each of them and convinced he wouldn’t recall a single one of their names. Even under the best of circumstances, this kind of recall was not among his gifts. 

When introductions were complete, Oswin turned back to Harry with a more cautious smile. “It’s not that what we’re doing here is a _secret_ exactly,” he explained, “but if the Professors found out, they probably wouldn’t let us continue.” 

“I see,” Harry said, nodding with a rueful smile. “Well, I won’t tell.” 

Oswin’s smile brightened, and he seemed to take Harry at his word. Hufflepuff was Hufflepuff, apparently, no matter the time. 

“Should one of us at least walk with you back to the school? That was quite a fall.” The curly-haired boy was asking. Harry only remembered that his last name was Smith, so he just shrugged and shook his head. 

“I don’t think that’s necessary. But I could...help, maybe?” 

Oswin and Smith exchanged surprised looks. “Oh, well, that’s kind of you,” Oswin said, “but they _do_ breathe fire, so don’t feel obligated.” 

Harry was startled into a relaxed laugh. “Oh, it can’t be much worse than a dragon.” 

Oswin sat up very straight. “Have you encountered one, then?” 

Harry hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, in my Fourth—that is, when I was fourteen.” 

“Is that so?” Oswin looked wistful. “How fortunate for you, Potter. I’d love to have had your luck.” 

“Luck?” Harry echoed, uncertain. Oswin nodded dreamily. 

“Oh, yes, you hardly see any dragons anymore, you know. I’ve been sending my spare galleons to the effort to start the preserves out east since I was Alvin’s age, but they aren’t garnering the support they deserve.” 

“You mean in Romania?” Harry asked without thinking, and Oswin’s entire face lit up. 

“That’s right! You’re a supporter, too, then?” 

“Um, yes, I suppose,” Harry hedged, but fortunately he wasn’t asked for any more information. Oswin helped him up and gave him a critical once-over before pronouncing him adequately recovered to assist them. 

After just twenty minutes with the Hufflepuffs, Harry had three burn holes in his shirt, a new appreciation for Hufflepuff determination, and a dark green sap encrusting his fingernails which had the happy side effect of curing his headache and his bad mood. 

“That’s not what it’s _really_ for, though,” Oswin had reminded Harry solemnly as he capped the vial into which Harry had just finished emptying a Flaming Vera trimming’s gel-like sap. “It’s a healing agent, and that’s what they’ll use it for, out on the frontlines.” He squinted up at Harry. “My mother is out there, since they called in the Aurors.” 

Harry nodded, eyes wide. “I’m sure she appreciates what you’re doing to help.” 

Oswin sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit. “I think that she does, and I’d like to do more.” He added, rather fiercely, “But my father doesn’t really believe in fighting, so he won’t let us help with anything but healing.” 

Harry made an abrupt realization, and was embarrassed he hadn’t reached it sooner. “Any connection to _Newt_ Scamander?” 

Oswin looked up with a faint smile. “Yes, Potter,” he said slowly, but without condescension. “My father _is_ Newt Scamander.” He laughed. “You’re not much of a Slytherin, are you?” Then he winced, and opened his mouth presumably to apologize, but Harry was laughing. 

“Please, believe me when I say I take that as a compliment.” 

Oswin relaxed, though his smile remained unsure. “We all heard that you _chose_ Slytherin, though. And it’s been a long time since a Potter was at Hogwarts, but Mary Potter was a Ravenclaw, and your uncle a Gryffindor?” 

“It’s hard to explain,” Harry said quietly, sure he shouldn’t say anything else, but oddly moved to trust Oswin. Perhaps because he somehow reminded Harry of Ron, and also Hagrid, though that was mostly the fond way he’d smiled at a vicious vine that had just tried to shoot flames at his face. “I didn’t...I didn’t know what I’d be getting myself into,” he settled for. Which was true. He never could have imagined the specific horror that was waiting for him in the dungeons. 

After looking at him thoughtfully for a moment, Oswin smiled again and nodded. “You know, even the Hat gets it wrong, sometimes. Look at poor Myrtle.” He shook his head. Startled, Harry recalled that Myrtle would have died very recently, and wondered if she was already haunting the bathroom. 

“If I can help you somehow, Har—er, Potter, please let me know.” 

“Oh, well, thanks,” Harry said, blushing. “And call me Harry, if you’d like.” 

Oswin looked relieved. “Oh, very good. I know how Pureblood families can be about names and manners, and the only one who could have taught me would have been my dad, and he never paid any attention, either, so I tend to bollocks it up.” 

“Oh, me too,” Harry agreed vehemently. They grinned at each other, and Harry felt better than he had since he’d time-traveled, not that that was much of an accomplishment. But when he walked back into the school in the troop of Hufflepuffs, something made the back of his neck tingle and, looking up, he saw Tom Riddle watching them come in with a dark gleam in his eyes. 

Every happy feeling he’d had was gone, as completely as though Vanished, and Harry felt the fog come back for him. He let it take him up, grateful. 

**Chapter 7.2  
**

**Ignorance, No Matter How Deliberate, Rarely Lasts Forever; or, Voldemort discovers something about himself**

Voldemort refused to think about Harry Potter the rest of the evening. He read the book on time magic cover to cover, learned nothing of consequence, and fought the urge to incinerate the text in his subsequent moment of pique. Instead he took a potion to sleep, which he hadn’t been forced to do since his first reincarnation. When he woke in the morning, because the tedium of teaching basic magic to children would never take up more than a fraction of his mind, he forbid the rest of it to think of Harry Potter at that time, either. 

A Horcrux was important—particularly one which was incomplete and unsealed, and, therefore, vulnerable. He needed to decide how to address Harry’s status, and thought a simple binding ritual, the last step of the process for creating a securing a Horcrux, would likely suffice. But execution could be a challenge, particularly doing so without alerting Harry to the nature of their connection. 

But of nearly equal importance was determining whether there would be any point in returning to 1995, not to mention whether such a goal was attainable in the first place. 

In a way, returning to the moments in history preceding Grindelwald’s fall made strategic sense. Voldemort could weaponize the discontent of Grindelwald’s sympathizers more easily now than ever, while they were having a crisis of confidence. By the time he’d consolidated his individual magical power in his original time, it was twenty years later and many of the families who had suffered at the end of the war had resigned themselves to Dumbledore’s new world order, or were even benefitting from it. 

But while Voldemort had no moral objection to disturbing the timeline, he did recognize that if he disrupted the path upon which Tom Riddle had been set, it could have uncertain consequences for Voldemort’s persistence in the future. 

The book on time magic had set out the three Theories of Time which Voldemort had recalled from an earlier, rudimentary study, and which were considered to be the only viable options, based upon magical experiments. Divine Hand, which hypothesized that when a person sought to disrupt the crucial events of a particular loop, some unexplained, but reasoning force would intervene, sometimes creatively, to repair the deviation. Inherent Compulsion, which hypothesized that something within each person, deeper than instinct, sought to comply with the loop out of a sense of self-preservation (which seemed to best explain accounts of those who, observing events in a Watch Fire or other device and then attempting to act contrary to them, often found themselves physically unable, or made themselves perilously ill). 

But the third, and least detailed theory, was the one in which Voldemort put stock. That there were no rules of time; that the feeling reported of being compelled to act out a timeline that had been observed was psychological weakness in the face of a concept—the flexibility of time—which was incomprehensible to most ordinary minds. That the reports which gave rise to the theory of the Divine Hand were other humans meddling out of some sort of philosophical notion that time was not to be disrupted. 

More interestingly, the book cross-referenced a few dozen separate works and summarized their central topics, which permitted Voldemort to make a list for further research, with particular regard to those that dealt with the mechanics of time travel, and accounts of accidental time travel preceding the implementation of Ministry-issued Time-Turners. 

He also had to build some inroads with Slughorn, as he would soon need to brew the next batch of Polyjuice Potion, so he accepted the invitation to dinner the following evening, and then went to the Great Hall, where the Slytherin table was curiously empty. Though the Pureblood families at this time were known to encourage their children to dine privately, it was unusual for there to be _no_ Slytherins about. 

There was an easy antidote to his confusion, but Voldemort’s heart pounded at the thought of being back in Harry’s mind. It was not _fear_ , which he could not possibly feel with respect to a sixteen-year-old boy, and it was not anger. He wondered if he was becoming ill. 

Back in his rooms, he came close to taking Dreamless Sleep once again. The stack of books he’d selected from the staff library, most of which he’d already perused, hadn’t sufficed to calm him enough for sleep. 

He was thinking of his Horcrux, whom he’d have in class the next day. And the thought of Harry Potter was not infuriating, as it had always been before. All he felt was confusion, which was a state he detested. And it had beset him, periodically, since he’d arrived in this time. He would like to blame the body Hilda’s lake gave him, but he thought that the feelings preceded it. He recalled a subtle shadow of what he felt now in the summer, also, when he’d frequented Potter’s mind. 

Perhaps on some level he’d known, even then, what the boy really was. 

But the thoughts of his Horcrux were now far from general. They revolved around Harry coming in Tom Riddle’s hand in the Slytherin bathrooms. 

Perhaps it was because it had been disorienting, to experience it all from Potter’s perspective. A combination of shock, denial, and extreme feeling had made Potter’s mind a very frustrating vantage point. All of the detail was lost. 

Once, Voldemort had spent three months meditating in the Tibetan mountains to refine his already strong Occlumency. There, he’d found that he could envision certain past events in his own life almost as vividly as though he was using a Pensieve. Sometimes, he discovered in these memories a new revelation, unavailable at the time he’d lived the event, that was clearer in recollection. 

If he could unlock what troubled him about the night before the last, perhaps he could remaster his distracted mind. 

He set aside his book, placed his feet flat on the floor, rested his hands on his knees and closed his eyes. He found the memory where it rested amid so many swirling, tugging trains of thought and sensation, and focused on building all the missing elements into the scene as it replayed. 

The boys filing into the showers. Harry’s head jerking to the side when he heard the Notts’ casual vulgarity. 

Tom Riddle crowding Harry up against the wall, and the moment when Harry realized what was happening, his body taut as a wire at this first, cruel intimacy. The way Harry’s sighs seemed to rattle, as though pulled from him by force. How he spasmed needily at Tom Riddle’s careless touch. 

“Scream for me, Potter,” Riddle had said, as bored and even as though prompting Harry to answer an exam question during a revision session. “Can’t you scream?” 

Harry’s head fell back against the tiled wall with an audible thud. Harry’s scream—his submission—began with a low noise, a last reluctant gasp, then rose to a single sharp note that reverberated in the shower stall for a moment even after Harry had slumped back against it. 

Voldemort opened his eyes and stumbled, breathing heavily, to the bed. He didn’t bother undressing, or in the end, lying down: he leaned his hip against the edge of the mattress, shoved aside his robes and unbuttoned his trousers with almost unbearable urgency. His own touch made him gasp. 

He’d never understood the allure of sex. He’d done a healthy amount of perfunctory masturbation now and then, with no particular scene in mind. But now he groaned at the thought of Harry—that insufferable brat, that bold little idiot—how he could take his hair in handfuls, how he could arrange him how he liked, and how through it all the boy would _beg_ … 

He came hard, so hard his bitten lip was numb and there was blood in his mouth, so hard the shot of come painted an incriminating white line halfway across the dark green bedspread. 

No, he’d never understood it. His own fucking had been, in general, an expression of dominance or a chore that had an element of a bargain to it. But he’d never thought of it with someone who _belonged_ to him. Someone whose body and mind were his to bind. Someone who could never exploit a vulnerability, which was how Voldemort had always regarded abandon. 

Voldemort stretched across the mattress in rumpled clothes without bothering to clean up, which should have disgusted him. But he felt more relaxed than he had since... 

...than he ever had. 

He slept, deep and dreamless, with no need for Dreamless Sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks to mith for beta reading!

**Chapter 8.1**

**What Dreams May Come to He of Anguished Heart and Strained Mind; or, Harry yearns to go home.**

“Harry! Harry, wake up!” 

The familiar voice pulled Harry out of sleep immediately. Before he consciously decided to move, he had sat up and thrown his arms around Ron’s neck. Harry squeezed so tightly that Ron literally choked before Harry adjusted his grip, without loosening it at all, and Ron tentatively patted his back with understandable dismay. They’d never really been big on hugging. 

“All right there, mate?” 

Ron’s voice was in his ear, and also, Harry felt, rebounding off his heart. It was inside him, making him whimper with relief. He was home. It had all been a dream—no, a nightmare. The worst and most intense he could recall, but it was over. The feeling of his arms around Ron was his proof. Ron’s smell, which Harry didn’t realize was familiar, filled his nostrils: the clean scent of wool and the dark green soap Molly made herself, but underlying that, something that was just Ron. 

“I missed you,” Harry managed, pulling back. He felt awkward doing it, but he couldn’t keep from holding onto Ron somehow, so he gripped his friend’s elbows to keep him close. Ron was sitting on the edge of his bed; he’d been leaning over Harry to wake him up. The dorms were dark. 

“Missed me,” Ron echoed slowly. “But…” 

“Never mind,” Harry rushed to interject. “I just had…” He laughed, not meaning for it to sound so broken, and then swallowed hard. “I had the _worst_ dream.” It was the most vivid, too, his subconscious reminded him. In some ways that dream of the past had felt more viscerally _real_ than any moment of his waking life. 

On impulse, he pinched himself, but the skin on his arm twisted painfully and nothing about his surroundings changed. Ron was looking increasingly solemn. 

“I had a dream, too,” he began slowly, and even though he hadn’t really said anything yet, dread curled around Harry’s heart. Was he...back, somehow? Maybe it wasn’t a dream, but a memory? In any event, he was back home now, he was certain of it. Or was he…? 

“You were gone,” Ron whispered. “We lost you in the Time Room.” 

“No…” Harry whispered. Already he felt like the edges of his vision were blurring. Instead of all the distinct colors and shapes of the messy dormitory at Gryffindor Tower, he and Ron could have been anywhere. Suspended in the midst of a dark, shifting scene. 

But Ron was still there, close and warm. Harry grasped his arms harder. “That was my dream too,” he admitted. As he searched Ron’s face desperately for evidence he was a figment of Harry’s imagination, it seemed like Ron was doing the same thing. Tears were forming in his blue eyes as he scanned Harry’s face. 

“I don’t think we were dreaming.” 

****

When Harry woke in earnest, he felt like he had been crying for hours. And maybe he had; the unforgiving little pillow in his bed in the dungeons was damp. 

****

Harry spent the next day nodding distractedly through his other classes, including a rather vibrant purple explosion he caused in Potions. Afterward Professor Slughorn had lectured him in a kindly way about the Great Dungeon Fire of 1432, wherein an absent-minded Potions student had incinerated six classmates, not to mention himself. 

“You know, I was once a young boy in Slytherin,” Professor Slughorn said at the end of that anecdote, and at his change in tone—to something almost earnest—Harry was startled into looking at him directly for the first time since he’d sat down in the classroom. Beneath his fine robes and careful manners, his studied jocularity, was a sharp mind. It was evident in that moment, as he looked at Harry as though he saw everything Harry intended to hide. 

“But have you considered my advice, of forming a connection with Mr. Riddle?” 

Harry laughed. He hadn’t meant to, but he really couldn’t help it. Slughorn was looking at him so earnestly, and his words were ironic in at least three ways. In any event, the moment Harry’d had of seeing Professor Slughorn as intuitive passed at once. 

“Thanks, Professor,” Harry said weakly. “I will give that idea some more thought.” 

Harry left the Potions classroom and wandered toward Charms. He knew he should be trying to plan something, or _do_ something, but it occurred to him now how dependent he’d always been on the subtle guidance of Dumbledore, and the support and ingenuity of Ron and Hermione. There was something about his loneliness that carried helplessness along with it, and though he hated himself for it, he couldn’t shake off the stupor that he’d fallen into. 

The morning turned to afternoon and it was time for DADA. By then, Harry was too detached to experience any anxiety as he settled beside Goyle and fished his quill from his satchel. 

“Have your wits about you, I hope?” Goyle murmured when Voldemort, safely disguised as Andrews, appeared through the doorway that led to his office. 

Harry almost laughed again, but managed to swallow it at the next moment. _Hysteria_ , he thought giddily. _I guess that’s what this is._

The class passed as the others had. Harry supposed he had reached his tolerance for fear and then traveled so far beyond it that he could no longer muster a reaction. Every part of his days and nights seemed to be equally horrifying. Even the food in the Great Hall nauseated him: all the little differences from what he was used to being served at Hogwarts kept him from forgetting for a moment how truly far from home he was. 

It seemed like no time had really passed before the lesson was over and the other Slytherins were filing out of the classroom. “Come here, Mr. Potter,” called Voldemort absently. 

It was a strange parallel to the events of the class before, when Harry had felt the clawing panic of an animal. But today he just slipped his books into his satchel and his satchel over his arm, and walked up to Voldemort. He looked at him numbly, distantly fascinated by Andrews’ stern expression, his full, square jaw and bulky frame. There was nothing about him that made Harry think of Voldemort. 

Harry knew the moment they were alone, because Voldemort had been watching the doorway over Harry’s shoulder, and abruptly his eyes settled on Harry’s face. The expression of benevolent exasperation disappeared, and in its place was something closer to alarm, and an angry stillness. Harry’s scar pulsed with such heat his whole skull felt fiery. But like everything else the feeling was far away, like it was happening to someone else and Harry was nothing but a distant, curious observer. 

“You’re not sleeping,” he said flatly. “You’re not eating.” 

“I...did sleep,” Harry said. He knew he had, because he’d dreamt of Ron. 

“For an hour,” Voldemort shot back, turning around to pace the short distance across the front of the trapezoidal room. 

Harry winced at a particularly sharp burst of sensation in his scar, and must have made some noise, because Voldemort paused to frown at him. 

He tried to remember why Voldemort cared whether he ate and slept, and their exchange from the day before last floated back to him across the wall Harry had tried to erect between himself and all his recent memories. “No one notices me,” Harry insisted. “You don’t have to worry. By now they’d probably notice me more if I _did_ eat and sleep.” 

“Regardless,” Voldemort said coldly, “I gave you specific instructions, did I not?” His voice was almost his own, though Andrews’s anatomy made it come out cracked and harsh, the words were full of cold menace, and Harry shuddered and looked down. 

“Yes, you did,” he muttered. “I’m…” he fought down the momentary urge to rebel, thinking of Andrews’ arm. “I’m sorry,” he managed. 

“Very well,” Voldemort allowed. “But see you don’t misstep again, hm?” 

Harry nodded without looking up, masking his surprise. He’d seen through Voldemort’s own eyes how freely he cast Crucio on his own supporters when they displeased him. That Harry should have some sort of reprieve was baffling, when it seemed Voldemort should be _eager_ for an excuse to hurt him. 

“Tomorrow,” Voldemort went on, drawing Harry back out of his confused thoughts, “I require your presence. For a ritual. Related to...resolving our predicament.” 

Harry’s heart beat a little faster, but he stubbornly forced down the urge to be excited by the prospect of going home. If he went, Voldemort would go too. And Harry’s only comfort, and one which he clung to desperately in the most difficult moments, was that though it hurt that his friends were out of Harry’s reach, at least they were out of Voldemort’s reach also. 

“Do you mean, we’re going home, tomorrow?” He chanced an upward glance, and Voldemort smiled at him mirthlessly. 

“We will take a step toward our common purpose,” he said quietly. “But I am still analyzing the magic that brought us here.” 

“Then, what?” Harry asked, brow furrowing. “What are we doing tomorrow? What kind of ritual?” He couldn’t help it; that word in this context brought thoughts of the graveyard to mind. Though of course Voldemort couldn’t mean anything quite like _that_ , as he had a body and didn’t seem to desire Harry’s immediate death. It was Harry’s only experience with rituals. He wondered if someone always lost a hand? 

“It will not harm you,” Voldemort said, tone amused, and Harry realized that he’d been subconsciously clutching his left hand with his right, and Voldemort had seen. Blushing, he relaxed his hands and fidgeted with his wand. It made him feel better to hold it, though Voldemort was embarrassingly unconcerned about Harry being armed. 

“What kind of a ritual?” Harry asked again. “What will it do?” 

Voldemort narrowed his eyes. “The details are none of your concern.” 

“Will it take us home? Does this mean you know how we got here to begin with? If—” 

“Harry,” Voldemort said very quietly, and the near-whisper cut Harry off more effectively than a shout. “The details are none of your concern.” 

“All right,” Harry said slowly, his mouth dry. 

“Come just before moonrise,” Voldemort said, and at Harry’s blank look, he sighed. “Just before six o’clock,” he amended, and Harry nodded, looking around. 

“Here?” 

Voldemort paused briefly, then said, “Yes. Here will do. And Harry?” 

Harry had been backing away unconsciously, aware of the impending dismissal. He paused and met Voldemort’s stare in Andrews’ face. 

“Eat your breakfast and lunch tomorrow,” Voldemort advised. Harry’s empty stomach twisted, and he nodded. 

“I...all right.” 

Voldemort nodded, turning away. “For now, you may go.” 

Harry went. He felt unsteady, returning to the dungeons. He wouldn’t have suspected that he would be more fearful of Tom Riddle than his dark lord counterpart, but the buffer against his feelings was much more sorely tested by venturing into the dormitory than it had been by entering the DADA classroom. But Riddle was nowhere to be seen, and the other boys fell silent at Harry’s entrance. They looked at him not with predatory intent, but with a kind of anxious uncertainty that reminded him he’d had that confrontation with two of the Nott triplets, and apparently they’d recounted the story to the other sixth-year boys. 

Good. 

Harry changed into his pajamas behind the bed-curtains, again, and didn’t re-emerge. There wasn’t so much as a twinge from his scar, which made him frown thoughtfully. Had Voldemort left the school grounds? 

Harry hadn’t identified the steady pulse of pain in his forehead that he’d felt since the night before Voldemort’s arrival as the reason he couldn’t sleep. But whether it was coincidence, or Harry just needed a vestige of physical peace to drift off, he fell asleep almost immediately after settling against his pillow and closing his eyes. 

He didn’t dream. It was probably for the best. 

**Chapter 8.2**

A Lion’s Heart, Unquelled; or, Harry still doesn’t give up

Harry woke up early, his internal alarm more reliable than the charms Hermione had taught him which would make his wand chime or vibrate at the appointed time. He rolled out of bed in the darkness, a habit he’d formed in the past few days so that he could avoid all his dorm-mates. But Tom Riddle was awake and standing in the corridor when Harry slipped out, still in the midst of hastily donning his robes.

“Potter?” Riddle murmured, as though he hadn’t expected to see him. Harry couldn’t tell whether he was just out of bed or just going there; his hair was very slightly mussed, which Harry found strangely fascinating. He couldn’t recall Riddle ever having a strand out of place, not even when he had stood close to Harry, grasping his cock. 

The memory made Harry’s heart seize uncomfortably, and he couldn’t respond. 

Riddle didn’t seem to notice or care. And that’s when Harry realized that something was glinting on Riddle’s hand: a ring, large and ornate. It gleamed dully in the bit of moonlight that happened to fall between them and illuminate Riddle’s nimble fingers. 

“Potter,” Riddle said again, his tone softer and more honed, burrowing into Harry’s already injured heart like an icy arrow. Harry wrapped his arms around himself, hating how vulnerable he felt, wanting to fight back but frozen instead as Riddle came nearer. 

“There is something about you,” Riddle went on, in his quiet, piercing voice. Harry couldn’t look at him, but his eyes didn’t seem willing to close. So he stared at the Slytherin crest on the breast of Riddle’s robes as it drew closer. He could see the rows of thread that formed the embroidery, distinguishable despite the feeble light, and he wondered if his senses were heightened. Wasn’t that a side-effect of fear? A survival tactic sent from the old and inhuman portions of the mind? 

Suddenly, Riddle’s hand was rising, coming toward Harry’s face, and Harry couldn’t bear it. He closed his eyes just as the cool fingertips brushed his cheek, then turned firm, pressing his skin into his molars, then brushing his hair. 

Harry finally seized command of himself and turned away with a gasp. And for a moment, there was fire in his peripheral vision. He recalled the vision he’d seen in Mary Potter’s Watch Fire and swallowed. He’d known, on some level, that he had seen the future in that moment. And he’d been _born_ and _lived_ in a future much more distant, still. But there was something about the collision of time, just then, that made his mind reel. 

Mercifully, Riddle’s interest was fleeting. He laughed distractedly at Harry’s alarm, and then went past him and into the dormitory. Harry had the sense that Riddle’s mind was thoroughly occupied with whatever had given him the distant, dreamy look he’d had when Harry first stumbled upon him in the corridor. Harry had no idea what the reason for it could be, but he was absurdly grateful to be left alone. 

Harry didn’t know where to go; it was too early for breakfast in the Great Hall, so he wound up in the library. He sat at a table and stared at his satchel, certain there were plenty of things his teachers in this time expected him to read, and unable to bring himself to care. What was his life, at this point? To do what Voldemort said, until Voldemort killed him? He felt hollow with helplessness. It was worse than fear. It was the cupboard before his Hogwarts letter had come. He had promised himself he wouldn’t feel that way again, that the child who had taken Hagrid’s hand had been changed in that moment into someone new, and couldn’t change back. 

The moment’s reflection took hold. A wave of stubborness crept up to drown out the despair. He _had_ changed. He was no longer that boy the Dursleys could lock beneath the stairs without consequence. In fact, he’d never been that boy. Even then, he’d had his magic, and it had lashed out on his behalf in those satisfying, if minor, ways. 

Magic. Of course. It had been the answer before, and it could be the answer now. If he had learned anything from Hermione—and, he thought with a swelling heart, he _had_ learned from her, more than she could ever know and much more than what she’d related from a book—he knew that there were few tools more powerful for a young wizard than the silent books surrounding him in the Hogwarts library. 

Harry cautiously touched his scar. But at least for now, Voldemort was distant; his metaphysical eye was turned away. Harry could open any book, and Voldemort wouldn’t know. 

_Unless he casts Legilimens again_ , Harry reminded himself, and for a moment his resolve trembled with renewed fragility. 

But Harry’s jaw firmed and he shoved his misgivings aside. That had been magic too; and for every spell there was a counterspell, a form of defense. And against Voldemort’s Legilimency, Harry’s weapon was Occlumency, as Snape had insisted, and then utterly failed to impart. Harry was not a perfect student, but in only two areas of magic was he a total failure: Potions and Occlumency. Perhaps the fact he’d had the same teacher for each subject had more to do with his lack of success than any inherent shortcomings. 

So Harry cast one of Hermione’s bibliography spells (clumsily; he had to repeat it twice) and followed the little indicator threads through the aisles to an oversized volume that read _The Safeguarded Mind_ in an ornate font down its spine. 

An hour later, just when they began serving breakfast in the Great Hall, Harry closed the book and put it back in its place on the shelf. And within seconds, before he had even gathered up his satchel and headed toward the library doors, the itchy burn in his scar returned. Somewhere, Voldemort was back from wherever he’d gone. And though the realization did bring with it a significant amount of dread, Harry didn’t feel helpless, or hopeless. He _refused_. And Harry had learned that though he lacked plenty of desirable character traits, he had an undeniably powerful will. 

**Chapter 8.3**

**Malignance; or, a twisted dark ritual Voldemort performs without Harry’s consent**

Harry was glad for his burst of confidence later. He needed every bit of strength he could gather to make himself go to the DADA classroom at a quarter to six.

He thought at first he’d come through the wrong door. The room seemed enormous, because Voldemort had removed every desk from the floor and every item from the walls. He was standing in the center of all the bare stone. 

At the moment, Voldemort didn’t look like Andrews. Neither did he look like the version of himself that had emerged from the cauldron in the graveyard. He was still lean, but the harsh lines of his previous body were curved with graceful muscle, evident beneath his fitted charcoal robes. He had black hair, peppered with silver, swept artfully back over his temples and falling to his shoulder blades. His back was to Harry, but he turned his head slightly at his entrance, and Harry saw the baffling sight of his elegant profile, nose—lips—dark eyelashes. 

His eyes remained red, the color of fresh blood, but they were ringed with black and had an ordinary pupil, dilated but round. 

“Tactfully early,” Voldemort observed, drawing his wand. Harry, impulsively, drew his also. Rather than seeming tense or angry at the sight, Voldemort laughed, turning fully toward Harry so that Harry could learn he was handsome from every angle, and when he smiled, a dimple appeared in his right cheek. It was a much more intense version of Tom Riddle’s youthful allure. And the laugh, that was familiar too—he’d heard it in the Slytherin bathroom, and it didn’t sound much different outside his head than it had inside it. Harry hated Voldemort with a new depth, feeling the memory of Tom Riddle’s hand in that moment. Feeling a haze of lust even now, confused with fear and anger in a crippling potency. 

Voldemort arched his eyebrow at Harry and directed a wand movement in the vicinity of his own feet. Harry relaxed marginally, though of course he had known in the breath after he’d seized his wand, they weren’t about to duel. Near Voldemort’s shoes, a spinning silver light seemed to emanate from the stone floor, then radiate outward in a shimmering wave. It passed under Harry’s feet, then up the blank walls, to seal with a soft pop above their heads. 

“Come here, Harry,” Voldemort said softly. Harry pretended to need to watch his feet to navigate the floor. Recalling his earlier reading, he readied his mind, not letting himself be distracted by the pain in his scar, which increased exponentially the nearer he got to Voldemort. 

“Very good,” said Voldemort, and didn’t seem to notice Harry inhale sharply through his nose. He focused on the burning in his scar, which helped ground him, let him ride a tide of pain above all the other tangled feelings. 

“Your wand,” Voldemort said, and Harry realized that Voldemort was looking at the Holly wand with an absent, thoughtful furrow between his brows, lips pursed. “So many indications—I should have known.” He smiled, wide and wry, which made the corners of his eyes gather into crow’s feet. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry said quietly. Voldemort chuckled. 

“When we dueled in the graveyard,” he said, reaching out slowly, so that Harry would see he only meant to touch his wand, and wouldn’t recoil. “The wands knew,” he said, almost reverently. There was a gleam in his eyes that changed his entire expression. This was Voldemort _humbled_ , Harry realized, struck by how incongruent the notion was with Harry’s understanding of Voldemort’s entire character. The only thing that could cause him to feel this way was probably magic itself, Harry supposed. Magic was the only force in the world Voldemort was willing to give any credit. 

Harry didn’t want Voldemort to touch his wand; he trembled with the urge to jerk his hand back, or step out of reach. But at the same time, he felt viscerally drawn to Voldemort. It was obvious when they stood this close. There was an edge to that clawing pain, as though something in Harry was straining to be nearer still to Voldemort. 

Of course, that made no sense. The pain was probably starting to muddy Harry’s thoughts. 

Voldemort did not close the final, inch-wide gap between his fingertip and the Holly wand. He let his hand fall back to his side, and waved his own wand in an arc over Harry’s head. 

“According to Nagini,” he said quietly, “this will not hurt at all.” And he pressed the side of his wand against Harry’s cheek and whispered a very simple incantation: “ _Afflatus Restrictus._ ” 

Because it happened so suddenly, and because there had been no spreading of salt or etching of pentagrams, Harry didn’t know it was beginning until it was already underway. He hadn’t taken Voldemort’s promise that it wouldn’t hurt Harry very seriously, but more importantly than that, his skin crawled at the thought of being ancillary to any sort of dark purpose. And what other sort of purpose could Voldemort be expected to have? But before he could react at all, let alone object, the silver glow that enveloped them swelled more brightly. As it became brighter, it felt _nearer_ , as if the sphere was shrinking down and in and up toward the pain in Harry’s head. 

The light cooled the fire there, calming the riotous discomfort and the ringing in Harry’s ears, with greater and greater force. Soon the light was so intense that Harry had to close his eyes, and still he saw it bright on the other side of his eyelids. 

And then that steady throbbing burn was gone altogether. Snuffed out like a flame, and the light was gone. The room was still empty, but ordinary. Voldemort had his arms around Harry and Harry’s face pressed against his chest. 

Voldemort had his arms around Harry and Harry’s face pressed against his chest! 

Harry jerked back, and Voldemort let him go. Right away, though, Harry had a dizzy feeling with an edge of nausea, and his knees were weak, so Voldemort reached out again. This time he only put his hands on Harry’s waist, not quite holding him upright. His casual touch should have been revolting, but instead it cleared Harry’s head and settled his stomach. 

“ _What did you do to me_?” Harry hissed, and only when he saw Voldemort’s eyes widen did he realize he had _truly_ hissed. He’d made his demand in Parseltongue. With rising panic, he asked again, somewhat reassured when he was able to speak English. “What did you do?” 

“I completed you,” Voldemort murmured, but he had an edge of uncertainty in his voice, as though something about the past several seconds had surprised him. He cocked his head and released Harry again, as though testing something. When Harry stumbled a bit on his feet, Voldemort exhaled through his nose and grasped him again. 

“I’m fine,” Harry protested, but it wasn’t true. Or rather, it was, but only now that Voldemort was touching him. “What was that spell?” 

He thought back to what Voldemort had said before he’d put his wand against Harry’s cheek. “Did you say you’ve done this ritual with your _snake_?” Harry had the alarmed thought that Voldemort had meant to make him a familiar, or some other kind of pet, and fury bubbled up so fast and intensely he forgot the reasons he was acting meek and obedient around Voldemort. 

“What did you do?” he insisted in a snarl, stepping back and holding his wand with new purpose. “What did you do to _me_ ,” he added, battling back the tide of nausea that seemed to come up every time he withdrew from Voldemort’s touch. 

“Tell me!” he shouted. 

Voldemort had been frowning down at the palms of his hands, as though studying something there, but he glanced up at Harry’s last cry. “I reinforced the magic which connects us. The same magic that has allowed us to see through one another’s eyes and hear one another’s thoughts.” 

“Reinforced?” Harry felt sick, and his ears were ringing. He knew he was shouting, the way someone does to hear themselves in a noisy room. That’s what his head felt like—noisy with panic and his throbbing pulse. The only thing worse than having a connection to Voldemort would be having a _stronger_ connection to Voldemort. “You said this was about going home!” 

Voldemort folded his arms and arched a brow, and his calmness in the face of Harry’s fury made Harry angrier still. 

“You _lied_ ,” Harry spat, and then a moment later realized what he’d said, and laughed bitterly. “Well, of course you did. Why would I expect anything else?” 

“No,” Voldemort said in a measured tone. “I did not lie. I chose my words very carefully, Harry, and you made certain assumptions. There are two valuable lessons you could learn from this experience. Now, are you ready to speak intelligently, or will you continue to throw a tantrum?” 

Harry growled and pointed his wand at Voldemort’s face, spurred on by the unimpressed look he elicited. “Tell me what you did!” 

Voldemort raised his hand and pointed toward the door that led to his office. It swung open, and Harry tensed but didn’t incant. “Shall I set fire to Andrews’ rather flammable cage?” 

“You wouldn’t,” Harry hissed. “You need him.” 

Voldemort snapped his fingers, and the unmistakable noise of a large fire bursting to life emanated through the open doorway. 

Harry, for a crazed moment, kept his wand up, and then Voldemort reached out and simply took it from him, then canceled his wandless _Incendio_. Either it had all been a trick, or possibly Andrews was suffering burns of some degree, but Harry knew better than to think he had any leverage at the moment. He stood before Voldemort, wandless, shoulders slumped. 

“Now,” Voldemort said evenly. “Tell me, is there pain in your scar?” 

Harry shook his head, and when Voldemort made a small sound of disapproval, Harry glared up miserably through his fringe. “No, it doesn’t hurt,” he said in a low voice, rough from shouting and the emotional chaos of the last few minutes. 

“How does it feel?” Voldemort’s tone was clinical, but there was an edge of sincere interest that Harry tried not to think about. 

“It feels…” he frowned. “It’s like...the opposite of before.” 

Voldemort made another impatient noise, and Harry rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “It feels better,” he said. He wasn’t about to tell Voldemort about the vague, straining sensation, which abated at Voldemort’s touch. 

Voldemort was nodding, his expression gradually shifting from puzzled to vexed. “Be still,” he said more softly, but it was no less a command. Harry gritted his teeth as Voldemort ran his fingers through Harry’s hair. It was odd, to be braced for pain and feel, instead, a gentle but sure touch, the suggestion of cool fingertips grazing his warm scalp. 

“What was that spell?” Harry insisted. Voldemort’s hands fell from Harry’s hair to his shoulders, and he met Harry’s eye. He was a head taller than Harry, and this near, Harry could smell a faint spiciness that was somehow reminiscent of his dream of Ron. 

“We have been bound since you were a child,” Voldemort said after a long moment. “But the bond was accidental—and, as a result, incomplete. Therefore it was subject to certain misbehaviors, and among those were a number which were inconvenient to me.” 

Harry thought of his erstwhile tendency to see things through Voldemort’s mind. An ability that Voldemort had apparently discovered, since he’d used precisely that to lure Harry to the Ministry. Harry could see why Voldemort would more broadly find Harry poking around in his mind “inconvenient,” though Harry hadn’t delved into Voldemort’s mind at all since they’d traveled in time. 

So Voldemort’s story made sense, in a way, and also made no sense at all. “But you didn’t sever it.” 

“A bond of its nature and age…no. Its effects could have been unpredictable..” 

Voldemort was stroking his back with his left hand, Harry realized, while he kneaded Harry’s shoulder gently with his right. But Harry was barely aware of the details, only that he felt all the tension of the past days draining from him. He recalled being held by Voldemort in the first moments after the ritual completed, and he yearned to step back into his arms… 

Shaking his head, Harry drew away. Again, Voldemort let him go. This time instead of looking at his hands, he put them in his pockets, and the right re-emerged with a vial of dreamless sleep. 

“You shall take this,” he told Harry firmly. “Tonight.” 

Harry thought of going to his dorm and a small noise escaped him. Absurd as it was, he felt safe and...oddly warm, from the heart outward, here with Voldemort. But he couldn’t imagine he’d get another night’s reprieve from Tom Riddle. 

Voldemort was studying him. “Harry?” 

“If I take it,” Harry began slowly, “I’d sleep through something happening?” 

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t how it works. Besides, Tom Riddle will do nothing more to you.” 

Harry shot Voldemort a glare before he could second guess the impulse. “How do you know? Are you giving him orders too?” 

Harry wondered, then, what Voldemort did intend, if they were stuck in this time? Would he recruit Tom Riddle? Would Tom Riddle’s single-minded emptiness be vulnerable to that offer? The overlap seemed comical: two versions of the same man trying to rule the same group of people, and at the same time. Harry didn’t think either was likely to yield to the other. 

He had some confirmation from the look on Voldemort’s face. 

“He won’t,” he assured Harry, then added cryptically, “he has other concerns. Just continue being easy to ignore. Make it so that you hardly seem to be there and he might forget you altogether.” 

Then Voldemort frowned. “Has Mary Potter written? Asking you to weekend at the Potter House?” 

“No,” Harry said slowly. “Is that...usual?” 

“It’s not extraordinary.” He looked at Harry, and seemed about to step forward and reach out to him again before he stopped himself. Relief and disappointment wrestled in Harry’s chest. 

“You will tell your dorm-mates that you are spending the weekends with your family,” said Voldemort, “and that you are Flooing to and from my rooms. And you will spend the weekend here.” 

Harry stared at him. “In your rooms.” 

Voldemort nodded. “You’re too conspicuously _Gryffindor_ to survive Slytherin.” He looked at Harry askance. “Some time, perhaps we’ll have time to discuss why you _chose_ that House, aside from what is obviously a grave underestimation of its dangers.” 

Harry had never felt more deeply shocked and uneasy. _What had happened during that ritual?_ Some fundamental shift seemed to be the only explanation for a suddenly tactile Voldemort offering to shelter him from the Slytherins. 

“Thank you,” Harry said slowly. “But...no.” 

Voldemort went still. “No?” he echoed quietly. 

Harry’s face was hot. “Er, that’s right. I’d rather...not.” 

Voldemort’s expression shifted from absolute tension to affable within the space of a moment. “Oh, Harry,” he said. “You mistake me. This wasn’t an invitation. It was a _request_.” 

Harry swallowed, frozen to the spot as Voldemort loomed nearer once more, this time slipping the dreamless sleep into Harry’s pocket and framing Harry’s face with his hands. They felt as cool and smooth as a balm on his warm skin. 

“Do you understand?” 

Harry nodded. Voldemort’s thumbs stroked his cheeks, and then he let him go. 

“Go collect your things, and you’ll be back before curfew.” 

Harry nodded, still dazed, and retraced his steps to the classroom door, feeling increasingly uneasy the further from Voldemort he got. It wasn’t that he worried that the dark lord was lying to him; on the contrary, he was sure that Voldemort was lying about their “incomplete” bond and the ritual to “repair” it. What bothered him the most was that it was a lie that was obviously rooted in some truth, so instead of just dismissing it all outright, Harry was left to obsessively parse it into a thousand hypothetical answers. 

All Harry knew for certain was that the first thing he would do when he could slip away from Voldemort was return to the library and, armed with the bit of research ability that he’d gleaned from Hermione despite himself, look up the incantation he’d carefully memorized: _Afflatus Restrictus_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We can't wait to hear what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Best Beta, Mith!

**Chapter 9.1**

**If One is Good then Several are Better; or, Tom makes Horcruxes**

_September 6, 1943_

Earlier that summer, when they were newly dead, he breathed in the power of his father’s life as he had the Mudblood’s outside the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. He savored his father’s murder especially, knowing for certain that it represented more than a satisfying death, but would take him further in his pursuit of immortality.

It had taken a few months for him to prepare to infuse his ring. And though it was easier in some ways this time—he knew the pain and the wrenching sensation would end, that he hadn’t lodged himself in some limbo halfway to hell—he was left physically weaker than the first time.

He couldn’t let his peers see him in this state, so he stumbled into the Woodswoman’s clearing near dawn. He’d timed everything exactly. It was Saturday, and his absence would be chalked up to extra revising until late that evening.

Hilda looked him over and snorted. “Foolish boy,” she muttered, but didn’t seem surprised. She muttered as she pushed him onto the large rock that served as a stool near the fire. “Twice, since I saw you. Not once, but twice!”

He gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering, and accepted the mug of warm broth she ladled from her cauldron and handed to him.

He wanted to tell her that he would supersede all his predecessors in history and create six objects, but he didn’t have to justify anything to her. She was too mad to understand the significance of such an achievement anyway.

Possibly he’d needed more than a few months to recuperate from the original imbuement, but no matter. He wasn’t at immediate risk in Slytherin even without the full range of his magic; it had been a long time since he’d had to prove himself to any of his peers.

He swallowed a mouthful of broth then choked on a small, sharp bone. It had cut him high and far back on his palate, and he spent a few seconds gagging on his own blood while Hilda hummed to herself.

He dumped the rest of the broth into the grass and glared at her. By now, he knew that at least half of what she did was intentional, and that snarling at her only encouraged her.

“The bones increase its potency,” Hilda remarked. “You should have drunk it all, but you’ve had enough you should be feeling better soon.”

Dug emerged from the trees, dragging something large and long-dead with him. Tom wrinkled his nose. Dug didn’t acknowledge him until he’d stopped a dozen yards from the fire and finally let go of his prize. Then he jerked his head around, observed Tom and trilled cheerfully as a sparrow, loping over to sit at Tom’s feet.

“Pathetic little leech,” Hilda muttered. Dug looked at her briefly, pinning his ears and emitting a low growl. Tom ignored the elf and took stock of himself. He _did_ feel less ill than he had even a minute before. His magic was less erratic. But he still had no desire to go to Hogwarts; instead he felt a bone-deep weariness, which he tried not to show, sitting up a little straighter on his primitive seat.

“Sulking, are you?” he snapped at the Woodswoman, who still refused to look at him. “Did you really think _you_ could tell me what to do?”

It was ridiculous. She was nothing; a hermit living in self-imposed squalor out in the wilderness. He had the tools for greatness, which admittedly she did not possess, but her lack of ambition— _that,_ she was responsible for. He disdained her, and disdained himself for coming to her. But her disinterest in bettering herself made her predictable and unthreatening, as close as Tom could get to trust. His failure would never benefit her, the way it might his other alliances.

All she really wanted, in the end, was him alive and willing to shed blood in her lake from time to time. It was almost the same thing as caring, and as close as he wanted anyone to get.

“I knew you wouldn’t listen,” she agreed, gazing contemplatively at the fire, though it was just an ordinary cooking flame at the moment; it was giving off a copious amount of heat, but no visions of the future. “But, somehow, that doesn’t temper my disappointment.” She looked at him with the brown eye closed and drew a circle in the dirt between her bare feet. They were caked with mud, her toes crooked, the nails thick and yellow. She tapped the center of the circle meaningfully with her stick.

Tom knew the conversation to which she referred. When he had first asked her about immortality, she’d told him nothing could last forever, not the most solid rock, nor the brightest star, nor the magma miles beneath them. He’d rolled his eyes and asked his questions elsewhere. When he returned and shared what he’d learned, she had drawn a circle in the grime of the table in the cottage, divided it in half, then halved one half, and so on.

He understood what she was implying. But to reduce something as ephemeral as the soul to a two-dimensional graph was juvenile even for her. And now he was, himself, evidence that her theory was wrong.

“Where does a Woodswoman draw the line, anyway,” he murmured derisively, “between drawing and writing?”

Her brown eye opened, and she slipped her upper lip fully behind her protruding tooth, and looked at him the way she sometimes did Dug. With no fondness—a hint of derision, perhaps. Tom’s blood boiled, and he leapt to his feet.

“You dare to look at _me_ as though I’m lesser?” He drew his wand, vibrating with the desire to cut her, perhaps in half. He hadn’t done that to a person, not yet. He recalled the too-brief slaughter at Riddle Manor and thought, _what a waste._ He should have played with them for days.

Hilda just looked at him. Even from inside the cottage, the bone curtain’s violent rattling was easy to hear.

“Diffinido,” he cried, but his voice was unsteady from the ritual and his magic felt like a whipcord, he couldn’t quite grasp it and it stung where he made contact.

The curse sailed weakly through the air, but dissipated halfway to the target. Of course. He hadn’t _forgotten_ that hostile magic would be doused by Hilda’s clearing; it was like fighting with fire underwater. But in his rage he’d acted before he could think. He did the same thing again, seizing a rock and throwing it at her disdainful face with all his strength.

It would have made contact, but Hilda moved out of its path at the last moment, her mismatched eyes wide.

“Go,” she advised quietly. “You have what you’ve come for.”

****

Left without an alternative, and admittedly somewhat restored by the Woodswoman’s foul potion, Tom returned to Hogwarts. He wasn’t seen in the corridors, but had he been, they would have assumed he was on a prefect patrol.

Tom was weary into the depths of his bones, but still buoyant with the knowledge he’d accomplished something no wizard before him had. He expected no less of himself, and knew this was merely the first of many occasions, but he still permitted himself to savor it.

It was in that frame of mind that he saw Potter. The boy came out of the dormitory just as Tom had been about to go in. They both froze. In the darkness of the unlit dungeon hallway, Potter was in shadow except where a few fingers of moonlight touched him; half-invisible, like an apparition. They were so close, it was easy to raise his hand and touch him. Tom wasn’t sure he’d even moved his feet.

Tom did not drink in excess, nor take from the Notts’ collection of creative hallucinogens no matter how often they offered. But he thought he might be experiencing a similar feeling to one brought on by those substances, based on observation and anecdote. Euphoria after the exhaustion of days past had worn Tom a bit thin, and Potter seemed to call to that raw part of him. Potter’s jaw was smooth and pleasantly warm, and touching him soothed the uneasy current that Tom felt at all times. The energy which fueled his ambitions but which kept him painfully alert in all his waking moments; which made him want to cut the smirks off the face of any critic and the knees from under any rival.

It only lasted a moment, and he only let it happen because he was not yet himself. But there was a moment of absurd tenderness, as though his reaction to Potter was some sort of supernatural signal, a magical directive: _take this_.

It passed, at least in part. Tom continued into the dormitory; he would ponder the situation the next day.

Then that evening, Potter wasn’t in the dormitory.

“Said he was spending the weekends with his aunt,” explained Goyle, when asked. Tom gritted his teeth.

But he was half-convinced the sensation he’d had, touching Potter that very early morning before, was a random side-effect of his agitated magic. Already he felt distant from the intensity of that moment. By the time Potter appeared in the Great Hall for breakfast on Monday morning, Tom wasn’t surprised to find that, indeed, any sense he’d had of Potter’s remarkability had gone.

Unremarkable though he was, Potter’s certain amiability appealed to people Tom might not have expected. For example, Potter was friendly with the young Lady Nott, and continued a charade of the same with the Blacks.

More interestingly, Potter had made inroads in other houses. The boisterous Gryffindors didn’t openly sneer at him in the halls; they treated him almost as they did Tom, with a sort of gruff respect. And a few of the Hufflepuffs seemed sincerely fond of him, including Scamander, whom Tom had made a concerted effort to ingratiate more than once. Tom’s efforts had never been so politely, nor so firmly, declined.

Potter might be surprisingly gregarious, but his foothold in the social strata didn’t feel like a significant threat. Ultimately, Potter was nothing; he was just like all the others, except with dubious status attached to his name.

Somehow, the thought of Potter spurred thoughts of that sensation in the corridor the night Tom returned with the ring. He preferred not to think of any of it.

Tom already had more plans than he had time to execute them. So long as Potter kept his head down and made no trouble, he wouldn’t concern himself further. Investing an undue amount of time cultivating him wouldn’t be sensible.

**Chapter 9.2**

**Unlikely Bedfellows; or, Harry and Voldemort have a talk**

_September 6, 1943_

Harry was in such a hurry to get out of the dormitory and back to Voldemort, he almost didn’t realize that he was _in a hurry to get back to Voldemort_. Not until he was standing outside the door leading directly to the DADA professor’s office, realizing numbly that he had his pajamas stowed hastily in his shrunken trunk, and would have to change into them at some point.

He was locked in place by the thought of unbuttoning his robes, fumbling with his belt, toeing out of his shoes, and slipping into his pajamas, all with Voldemort mere feet away. Were there bathrooms he could use? Should he have changed before he came? No, ridiculous.

He might have stood there all night long, but voices further down the corridor reminded him it was nearly curfew. Harry knocked hastily on the door and it opened at once, though no one stood on the other side. In fact, Harry was admitted to a completely empty room, and as he stepped uneasily inside, a parchment crane soared from the desk to hover near his head.

Harry plucked it from the air and it immediately went inert. Unfolding it, Harry recognized Voldemort’s handwriting, informing him that Voldemort was visiting Professor Slughorn and would return presently. The last part of the note was the most alarming, somehow: _Make yourself at home_.

Harry exhaled, trembling with the sudden absence of tension. Granted, this wasn’t a true reprieve. Voldemort would be back soon; it wasn’t as though Harry had any lasting kind of privacy. He swallowed, and looked around. The office was pristine. It was uncluttered but also impersonal; Voldemort obviously hadn’t bothered to pretend Andrews was the type to make his quarters his own, or at least not all at once.

That thought had Harry walking across the room to the door which was open to Voldemort’s quarters, and where Harry had last seen Andrews. He half-expected something to keep him from entering, but of course there was nothing precious stored anywhere in Voldemort’s rooms. He hadn’t brought anything with him through time except Harry.

Sure enough, the trunk was there in all its seeming innocence, sat against a wall, motionless. Harry crept nearer, thinking of Moody, who had looked like he was at the bottom of a well. He rested his fingertips on the lid and hoped that Voldemort had afforded Andrews some extra space, but fairly sure that wasn’t the case. He didn’t think Voldemort would care whether Andrews had room to do anything but breathe.

Knowing it was useless, but still convinced he should try, Harry tried the brass latch to no avail.

“Andrews?” he whispered, leaning close. He was sure this, too, would be useless. Voldemort would have the trunk plastered in silencing Charms. Still, he said, “I am sorry I can’t help you. If I try, I think he’ll kill us both.”

As soon as he heard himself say it, Harry wondered if he still felt that way. Certainly Andrews’ life seemed to be forfeit; it was only a matter of time for him. But Harry had this...connection, whatever it was. He’d fleetingly wondered if it had to do with the time travel, but if it did, it seemed a random side effect. Hermione had never relied upon anyone when she was jumping backward through the hours with her Time-Turner. Whatever it was, he was struggling to remember that Voldemort was a threat. He had hurried back here not only out of a desire to be obedient, but because he felt oddly secure with Voldemort nearby.

Even in the bathroom, for some reason and in rebellion against all good sense, Voldemort’s voice in his ear had been deeply comforting.

Harry should not have thought about it, not even fleetingly. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck and his knees shook. He heard a voice, but it morphed into three: the jeers of the Nott triplets, punctuated by asides on other topics, as though watching Tom Riddle jerk him off was a program on the telly that evoked only passing interest. A sport they liked, but a match they weren’t invested in.

“Harry,” said Voldemort, from where he had appeared as though from thin air a foot from Harry’s face. His hands were warm and firm on Harry’s wrists.

Harry snapped out of his reverie and stumbled backward. Andrews’ trunk was between them.

“You were having a panic attack,” Voldemort observed, shaking his head. “Your emotional resilience is really in tatters. Time for bed.” Voldemort shrugged out of his outer robes and crossed the room to hang them on a peg. Harry gaped at him.

“Isn’t it early?”

“Not for someone who hasn’t slept properly in days.”

Harry frowned, perplexed anew by the knowledge that Voldemort had taken an interest in Harry’s well-being. It couldn’t be for Harry’s sake, so what was the reason? But Harry _was_ tired, the kind of weariness that makes critical thinking especially difficult, so he decided not to think about that now. There was a sofa by the cold fireplace that looked welcome enough for someone who’d been sleeping in the same room as Tom Riddle. Harry headed that way.

“No,” Voldemort said. Harry paused and looked at him. He had his arms folded and when Harry met his eye, he tilted his head to the side, in the direction of a large, neatly-made bed on the adjacent wall.

“Er,” Harry said.

“You will sleep best if we are in physical contact.”

Harry’s brain short-circuited. He was surprised there weren’t visible sparks.

“I…” he could articulate a protest, surely. There were at least a dozen of them that came to mind. “No,” was all he managed, but at least it got Voldemort’s attention. “That won’t be necessary,” he added.

“Do you presume to know what is necessary?” Voldemort spoke quietly, which Harry was beginning to associate with the first signs of strain on his temper. Harry ignored his own unease.

“If you want me to understand, then you have to tell me what you did,” Harry said just as quietly.

He saw that Voldemort was about to object—on principle, Harry presumed, to being told what to do. But Harry wasn’t really giving an order, or making a demand. He was trying to explain, as best he could, that he wouldn’t be able to survive his own emotional turmoil if he didn’t understand more about what was happening to him.

Harry’s friends were often frustrated by his underdeveloped skills in communication, at least about things like _feelings_. And in his defense he didn’t know many teenagers who were all that much better at it than he was. Adults tended to let Harry alone; if he didn’t complain, or wasn’t express in his worries or opinions, they took his silence as a signal he must be fine.

Voldemort, on the other hand, was already beginning to pick up on what Harry _wasn’t_ saying. He was doing it now, Harry saw, as the threat of a scowl cleared from his face, leaving him only thoughtful. Another baffling element of this nightmare: that Voldemort should understand Harry more easily than most people could.

“Very well,” Voldemort declared. He had been standing near a pair of chairs. Now he sat down in one and crossed his legs, all in one motion. He was graceful when he moved; Harry couldn’t help noticing that.

Tom Riddle wasn’t the same, not exactly. His posture was perfect and there was nothing about him that could be called _awkward_ , but he lacked the complete ease of Voldemort’s bearing and movements. Harry wondered whether the lack of self-consciousness was a result of Voldemort no longer caring what anyone thought and revealing his natural elegance, or just having ingrained all the habits he’d begun instilling in himself as a child so deeply they seemed natural.

Either way, it made Harry relax more easily to catalogue all their differences. He knew that what had happened in the bathroom wasn’t that bad; worse things happened to people all the time—something much worse was happening to Andrews, now and in this very room. But when Harry so much as grazed the memory, it _hurt_ him. Deep waves of pain that paralyzed him a moment and then echoed through him for hours.

“When I performed Legilimency upon you,” Voldemort was saying, “I discovered the true nature of our connection. Before that, I assumed it was a curious side-effect of the night you rebounded my curse. But I didn’t anticipate its depth.”

Harry felt better with Voldemort sitting. He considered the other chair. It would be good manners to go sit in it, but he liked the feeling of Voldemort sitting while Harry was on his feet. It was a very minimal shift of advantage, almost too pathetically slight to register, but Harry would take any scrap of comfort he could find.

“And what is its ‘nature’?” As a compromise, he went to the chair and leaned against it.

“It’s a soul bond,” Voldemort said, as though that would mean something to Harry. Harry blinked. The only time he remembered anyone mentioning a soul was on the occasions that Petunia and Vernon had taken him to church, which had been fraught with so many other tensions Harry had admittedly paid very little attention to the sermon.

And there was one other point of reference. “Like a Patronus?” Or, Harry thought, the sister spell which Hermione had thought to teach him, and which Harry had used to escape Voldemort on the 1943 side of the Time Room.

Voldemort sighed. “The state of the Hogwarts curriculum is unbearably deficient,” he muttered, then met Harry’s eye with an expression of strained patience. “Soul magic is an arbitrary term for an arbitrary grouping of spells. Magical nomenclature is based almost entirely on the mistaken assumptions of the earliest practitioners and…”

Harry’s eyes narrowed with a combination of confusion and suspicion that Voldemort was trying to sidestep the question. Perhaps noticing his expression, Voldemort paused and began again.

“Your soul is your consciousness. The sum of the energies, most of which reside in your brain, which make you distinct and self-aware. While it evades complete understanding despite centuries of magical study, we know that much. It is not tangible or physical and therefore freer of the limits of magic upon our bodies and environment. Through the soul, we can connect to magic—and to our surroundings, including other people—in a very direct way.”

It wasn’t a terrible explanation. “I see,” Harry said faintly. Then with more strength, “And we have...that.”

“A connection, which is soul-based and magical. Yes.”

“When we, um, touch,” Harry began, and was proud of himself for not faltering nor avoiding Voldemort’s eye, though he felt a fresh blush heat his cheeks, “it feels…” He didn’t have words for what it felt _like_ , so he tried again. “It _doesn’t_ feel soul-based. It feels physical.”

Voldemort nodded. “As I’ve said, there are some aspects of the soul which we do not understand, and that includes the extent to which it is integrated into the human body. Based upon our experience, I theorize that the body is above all else a container for the soul. The same way we are pained by what can harm us and experience pleasure when we do something which is good for us, our bodies reward sustaining the bond. When we touch, the link bears the least strain.”

This did make sense. Harry imagined the bond as a sort of elastic band. Of course, in that case… “If we were to get far enough apart, would it break?”

“Possibly. And quite possibly if it did rupture, it would damage one or both of us as well.”

Harry shuddered, and then realized something. _We_ , Voldemort kept saying. _Us_.

“You feel it too?”

Why Harry had supposed _he_ was the only one to experience the giddy contentedness when they touched, he wasn’t sure. Maybe because in his mind he had been thinking of it as an inside-out version of the torturous pain he’d felt at Voldemort’s touch previously, and which Voldemort had obviously not experienced in turn since the graveyard.

Voldemort’s composure shifted to the barest degree, if only for a fraction of a moment. It was fascinating to see, though Harry schooled his expression so he wouldn’t appear to have noticed.

“To some degree,” Voldemort allowed evenly.

Harry’s thoughts were racing. He thought again of their long-standing connection. Once, the pain _had_ been reciprocal, before Voldemort had inoculated himself with Harry’s blood. Harry had felt pain on contact, Harry’s touch had been _lethal_ to Voldemort’s host. If the relative intensity was the same now, then…

It was a strange thought, and it somehow made Harry feel more anxious instead of less helpless, so he set it aside for now.

“Um,” Harry said, wanting to fill the silence. Noting that Voldemort had actually been helpful for five consecutive minutes, he blurted out the next few words without thinking. “I think that’s all. For right now.” Then Harry realized that if they were done talking, they’d have to get in bed, and wished he could take the words back at once.

Voldemort seemed to be reading all of Harry’s thoughts without any effort, if the way he lifted his eyebrows and his slow, sardonic smile were any indication. Harry preferred him snake-like; he’d been much easier to look at. Now he had to look away, not that the rest of the room offered him any comfort. There was the bed, which sat against the wall with all the ominous symbolism of a gallows, and the bare shelves. The trunk which contained Andrews.

Harry’s thoughts stilled, spinning slowly back to his earlier thought. That the blissful feeling Harry had, and the determined tugging of the bond in Voldemort’s direction, could possibly be more intense in the opposite direction. If that was the case…

“I just don’t know,” Harry began slowly, trying not to sound _too_ measured, but choosing his words with care. “If I can really sleep in here, knowing that he’s...in there. With nothing to do, and no light, or…” Harry swallowed. The note of hysteria as he’d gone on wasn’t an act. “You probably don’t understand, but for ordinary people, it would be terrible.”

He realized belatedly that he might anger Voldemort with the last bit, but then again, Voldemort certainly didn’t think of himself as ordinary. He was unbothered, as it turned out.

“What would you have in mind?” he rested his chin in his palm as though they were discussing how to rearrange the furniture. “I cannot let him out, Harry. And I have little patience for inconvenience.”

“Of course,” Harry heard himself say. He really had been spending a lot of time around Slytherins. He got the impression that Voldemort knew exactly what he was doing, and was playing along for his own amusement. But Harry didn’t really mind, if it worked anyway. “You could untie him, though. Let him have plenty of food and water.” He really hoped _that_ went without saying, but just in case. Then Harry thought of his own cupboard. ”And give him a light and a few books.”

Voldemort continued to gaze pensively at Harry for a long moment, and Harry second-guessed himself with painful intensity. He was _not_ a Slytherin, and he certainly knew better than to try to _negotiate_ with Voldemort over something he could very easily force Harry to do instead.

But Voldemort reached out with his wand and cast three spells toward the trunk. The first was pale gold and slid inside the seam where the lid met the box, the second made the entire trunk glow, pulse once with energy and then dissipated, and the third, which was a ball of light, passed through the side of the trunk with a very soft pop and didn’t re-emerge.

“You’re welcome,” Voldemort said, standing up briskly. “Now, to bed.”

Harry remembered his anxiety from the corridor again in a rush. “I...need to change.”

Voldemort was beginning to seem exasperated, which probably should have made Harry more nervous, but he thought of taking his clothes off anywhere in Voldemort’s proximity and his blood ran cold. He couldn’t bear it if he didn’t have to.

“The bathroom,” Voldemort suggested eventually.

Harry nodded and walked fast toward the door that Voldemort indicated with a nod. There was another one next to it which was partially ajar. To stall, Harry looked inside. It was a closet, and the interior was incredibly vast, almost the size of the rest of the quarters combined. It was lit with sconces which fired to life when Harry stuck his head through the doorway, reminding Harry of the little automatic light in the Dursleys’ refrigerator.

Harry immediately had a thought. “Couldn’t Andrews go in here?”

He could tell from the icy silence that Voldemort gave in response he was toeing a line. So he withdrew and let himself into the bathroom. It was unremarkable, but clean; a tub, showerhead, sink, toilet, and cold tile floor. Harry changed hastily, then came back out with his robes over his arm. Voldemort was standing beside the bed, already outfitted in a nightshirt. His feet were bare.

Harry found himself staring at them stupidly, until Voldemort cleared his throat.

“Shall we?” he remarked wanly, and Harry obediently walked nearer. He made it to the foot of the bed before he found himself stuck again. For something to do, Harry reached out to fidget with the fabric of the dark green coverlet. It was a single layer of cloth and the threads were so fine the fabric seemed to shine, like expensive robes.

“What are they made of? Is it something magic?”

“Silk,” said Voldemort. He seemed amused by the question. “Will that not suit you?” He still stood at the head of the bed by the night table with his long arm propped against the headboard, waiting for Harry to get in first. His nightshirt was loose, especially in the arms; the fabric of the sleeve had fallen back so Harry could see his forearm all the way to the elbow. His skin was taught. If his body was marked by age, Harry had yet to notice, except the faint lines around his eyes and beside his mouth when he smiled and the silver in his hair. On his arms, there was a dusting of black hair that contrasted with the pale skin. It wasn’t unlike the effect of the sparse hair on Harry’s chest, but for some reason the sight made Voldemort seem undeniably _human_ and _male_ in a way nothing else had. Harry swallowed and tried to look away. His eyes didn’t travel far before he was staring again, this time at Voldemort’s hand: the long, narrow fingers relaxed into a slight curl, his palms broad and smooth.

“I could conjure something else,” Voldemort said. Harry had forgotten what they were talking about. Voldemort leaned forward to reach over the bed and turn back the coverlet and sheet on Harry’s side. His height and long limbs made it easy. Harry closed his eyes a moment for courage, then walked the few steps around the corner of the mattress and crawled in.

The sheets were nice. So nice, he wished for a moment he could feel them against more of his skin. (A thought which immediately made him blush in horror.)

“Now,” said Voldemort, who was already beside him in bed, before Harry could panic again at his nearness. He reached across Harry’s body, seized his left shoulder, and rolled him neatly into Voldemort’s chest.

A dozen strange sensations made Harry’s head swim. There was Voldemort’s smell, which was deep and complex, yet clean, like being outdoors. There was also the particular feeling of being chest to chest with another person, which Harry had experienced insofar only with the occasional hug. It was disorienting, to have a body with breath and a beating heart so close. Usually, Harry found it pleasant—it was something he shyly appreciated about a separation from his friends. The reunion always involved a quick, surprisingly strong hug from Hermione’s wiry arms, and from Ron a looser, but somehow more overwhelming embrace.

This was nothing like that.

For one thing, they were in bed, so it wasn’t hugging. It was _cuddling_. Harry firmly refused to laugh hysterically at the fact that he was _cuddling with the dark lord_.

For another, a hug was brief, if still a shock for Harry, poorly calibrated as he was for contact. It was pleasant and then it was over, though the sense of warmth and faint euphoria could sometimes linger. But Harry had been lying in Voldemort’s arms—there wasn’t a more accurate way to describe it—for nearly a minute already and would be there til dawn. The idea of being so close to someone for so long felt almost ludicrous, it was so alien.

Finally, there was the most obvious unfamiliarity. Something unmistakably magical was warming Harry’s skin and soothing his pounding heart. When all the adrenaline in his system subsided, he was left with a deep lethargy and an overwhelming desire for sleep.

He should have lain awake, tense and miserable, all night. But Voldemort had _done something to his soul_ ; something so strange and powerful that even knowing he was under its influence, Harry couldn’t bring himself to mind. He could only let it lead him into the soothing warm darkness of unconsciousness when mind and body are spent.

In the final moments before he relented and let sleep take him, he felt Voldemort’s hands rubbing warm circles on his back, and the soft rumble of his voice vibrating in his chest as he spoke.

“Good night, Harry.”

Something about the way he said it made Harry think he wasn’t supposed to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10.1**

**The Things One Does for L—; OR, rather, the things one does for teenage sleep habits**

Voldemort wondered if this was how all sleeping people behaved; he’d never observed one before. When Harry slept, he breathed very slowly and deeply. He bent his knees and drew them up just enough to press gently against Voldemort’s thighs, and one of his arms had, in the course of the night, wound up flung around Voldemort’s ribcage. His lips were parted and his eyelashes were dark crescents on his cheeks. Voldemort had taken his glasses off shortly after he fell asleep, using wandless magic to levitate them to the bedside table.

Harry was warm; he gave off a steady, pleasant heat. Voldemort had been quick to chill in all his bodies, and after Harry was asleep he found himself compelled to intwine their calves and hold Harry close, though he assumed he wouldn’t like a bed partner so near when it was time to truly sleep. It was the humming contentedness of the bond, yes, but it was also Harry’s flushed skin, how he murmured, distressed, at one point in the night but was soothed within a few moments by Voldemort stroking his hair off his face. Each pass of his fingertips stroked the raised skin of his scar. Curious.

Harry slept.

Voldemort had spent the hours since he’d sealed the Horcrux inside Harry suffering from more inner turmoil than he could remember ever experiencing before. He’d realized it as soon as they completed the ritual, but it only grew worse the longer he and Harry were separated. Something about the link between them had Voldemort craving Harry’s touch, and increasingly on edge the longer he went without it.

It had certainly never happened this way with another Horcrux; he’d hidden them all and hadn’t had any desire to visit, except to occasionally ensure they remained secure. Only Nagini stayed with him, and while he’d enjoyed having her looped over his shoulders or making her way up his calf, it was simple fondness and nothing more. It was nothing like the pleasure he felt when he touched Harry.

The sun rose, and Harry slept.

Voldemort had never heard of a human Horcrux. He’d assumed it was possible, having made Nagini, and knowing that one living thing wasn’t terribly different than the next, human or not. What he’d told Harry about the nature of Horcruxes wasn’t wrong, so much as it was incomplete. But perhaps making Harry had revealed a new aspect of Voldemort’s proudest life’s work.

Voldemort dozed off until the clock softly chimed ten o’clock in the morning, waking him, but still Harry slept.

Voldemort almost unwound their bodies at that point; his arm was cramping and really, the novelty of physical intimacy had finally worn off after thirteen hours. But when he drew back and Harry made a snuffling noise and burrowed back against him, he decided he could wait a little longer.

By midday, the sunlight was sufficient to highlight the very faint freckles on Harry’s cheekbones. His color was healthier and Voldemort needed to piss, but still Harry slept, so Voldemort held him.

Finally, just before sunset, Harry’s eyes fluttered open and they stared at one another. Harry’s eyes were intensely green without his glasses to obscure them. He blinked at Voldemort, his jaw tensed, and the familiarity Voldemort had grown to feel over the past hours disappeared.

Harry rolled away and Voldemort felt an icy chill pour into every cell that had been enjoying Harry’s warmth.

Harry sat up, his hair flat on one side but otherwise standing on end and even more ridiculous than usual. He was red-faced as he stared from Voldemort, who still reclined against the pillows, to the wrinkled sheets where he’d just been lying, in apparent disbelief.

“Where…?” he began, then stopped himself, frowning. He looked around the room while slowly stepping out of the bed, as though Voldemort might dart out a hand and draw him close again if he stayed within reach.

It was actually an impulse that Voldemort was suppressing at that moment, but he didn’t let it show, getting to his feet unhurriedly in turn. Surely his pounding heart was strictly attributable to the strange breed of Horcrux that magic and circumstance had crafted from Harry Potter.

“What did we…?” Harry began again, hugging himself and looking less disoriented, but more horrified with each passing moment. Voldemort supposed he shouldn’t take offense. He had been trying to murder Harry up until very recently.

“We slept,” Voldemort said, though he assumed Harry would have arrived at the answer himself, given time. “You slept for a particularly long while.”

Harry found the clock he’d been scanning the walls for, and he squinted at it then fumbled for his glasses. His hand hovered over them a moment while he undoubtedly realized that it was Voldemort who had removed them from Harry’s face, carefully folded them, and set them aside.

When he could see properly, Harry looked back at the clock and his lips parted in dismay. Voldemort conjured a glass of water and levitated it toward the boy.

“Drink,” he said sharply, and Harry, startled into thoughtless obedience, plucked the glass from the air and drank. Voldemort watched, and when it was empty, he refilled it. Harry drank the next glass more slowly, but without being told. Good.

“Food,” Voldemort added, starting for the little table in the chambers that was linked to the elf magic in the kitchens.

“Um, I’m not hungry,” Harry said, then blushed when his stomach growled loudly in disagreement.

“The elves can send whatever you like,” Voldemort continued, as though Harry hadn’t said anything. “In fact, never mind; I already know what you like, and the last thing you need is something doused in sugar. I’ll send for fruit, eggs, and some bacon.”

****

It wasn’t that Voldemort felt pain, or even true discomfort, but there was an unnatural yearning that couldn’t be right. He would have scoffed at the thought that a soul could have sensations, or yearn, but now it seemed he was experiencing exactly that. Even though Harry was just across the room, nervously pretending to revise since that’s what Voldemort had ordered him to do, Voldemort was restless with the powerful urge to be closer to him.

He had no outlet for his questions. In his own time, while certainly not his equal, he had the reliable intellect of Snape as a sounding board. Or even Bellatrix, though she was more a creative than a critical thinker. Sometimes, just giving voice to a problem could help resolve it.

Now Voldemort was in a building surrounded by academics, but he could think of no plausible way to pose this question as a hypothetical. And besides, he didn’t want to deplete his precious stores of Polyjuice, which he had apportioned carefully for use the coming week when he would be required to be outside his rooms.

Here and now, Voldemort’s only resource was the Woodswoman, so that’s where he would go.

“Um, what are you…?” Harry’s voice stopped him when Voldemort was halfway into his cloak and lifting his wand to Summon his boots.

Voldemort was not accustomed to being asked where he was going or what he intended to do there. It had always amused him that people saw the need to tell one another these things. He listened to them when his followers diligently relayed their reasons for coming and going, because he recognized that their excuses for parting for him were a sign of deference. But the idea of supplying such information himself was laughable.

Previously. Now, it made perfect sense that Harry should ask; in fact, it was oddly pleasing that he wanted to know.

“I’m afraid you’ll be spending the evening alone,” was Voldemort’s swift response. “I have spent the day here with you but have errands that can’t be delayed any longer.”

Harry frowned at the clock again. He seemed to be disoriented by how long he had slept. “All right,” he said uncertainly, and Voldemort nodded at him and then again, in a more pointed way, at the books on the table. “Be sure you finish that Defense chapter. It seems you haven’t learned anything at all since I became your professor. We can’t have that.”

Harry was visibly agitated by being teased, but Voldemort liked seeing him blush and therefore added, “No one has more to teach you than I do.”

Harry swallowed and looked away. Voldemort left him, his soul in tingling distress all the while.

Voldemort took the floo to Hogsmeade, made a series of Apparations, and delivered himself to Hilda’s clearing. He had to circle it twice before she finally decided to let him in. In the process, he kept catching himself wandering off the in the wrong direction, without a clear memory of her face. But he persisted, which was really only possible when he meditated on the weave of the bone curtain, which he recalled very well hanging over her mantel.

“Boy,” she greeted, squinting up at him. She was seated on a log, crouched toward her fire, predictably. It was a cool evening already, and she had a mound of ragged blankets in her lap which trailed onto the ground and over her feet. Voldemort wondered what she did besides wait for her elf to bring game for a foul stew, or brew the occasional potion for her rarely-used stores. When he came, she always seemed to be looking listlessly into the flames.

“You only call me that when I’ve made you angry,” Voldemort recalled. “I thought we parted on positive terms.”

“As ‘positive’ as we get, perhaps,” Hilda said sourly. “I didn’t expect you.” She looked back into the Watch Fire, then cursed in a language Voldemort didn’t recognize at whatever she saw. There was a heaving in the rags pooled on the ground around her feet, and Dug’s head popped out. He had a mostly-dry bone in his yellow teeth, long and gently curved with one sharp end; perhaps a rib.

“I wondered if we might have a mature conversation about souls, but perhaps you’re not yet capable of that.”

“Mature,” Hilda scoffed. “I’m older than you’ll ever be.”

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. “I can’t be killed.”

She swung her head around and glared at him. “You’re hard to kill. There’s a difference.”

Something prickled on the back of Voldemort’s neck. He blinked at the fire and the flames seemed to blur. “What have you seen?”

“Much,” she said, “but this is something I would know without seeing. You’re like the snake which eats its tail before the falcon can.”

Voldemort frowned for a thoughtful moment, then he remembered who he was dealing with. There was a long precedent of not being able to untangle her metaphors, no matter how much time he spent on them.

“Now that I have received your warning, I shall be more cautious in future,” he promised snidely. “Time, and eventualities, are immaterial. I have proven that also.” He spread his arms. “Haven’t I?”

Hilda looked at him for a long moment. “Proof,” she scoffed eventually. “A wizard’s word. Nothing can be proven. We are the eye in the dark and the ear in the silence.”

Voldemort touched his forehead. “I really don’t know why I wasted my time coming here.”

“Ah, that I can tell you,” said Hilda helpfully. She threw a handful of black sand on her fire and it went out at once, leaving nothing but a few smoldering embers in the ring of stones. “You wanted to continue the conversation we began yesterday.”

“Yesterday? We didn’t—ah.”

September sixth, of course. It had been a long time, but he wouldn’t soon forget the occasion of imbuing the ring. In some ways, that Horcrux felt like his finest achievement. It was the symbolism of his father’s death, he supposed, and the fitting setting of his mother’s ring. What he didn’t recall was the substance of his argument with the Woodswoman, only that he’d come there, taken a restorative draught and exchanged a few terse words which made him unwelcome.

It explained her mood, though. “Tom was not the master of his passions, surely you can understand.”

“You are never the master of your passions.” She closed one eye, then opened it and closed the other. He always found it disorienting when she did this. “Have you figured it out, then, or shall I explain again?”

“I suppose you’ll need to refresh my memory.”

She reached down and seized the bone Dug had been busily chewing and tugged it out of his mouth. He growled but allowed it, and she leaned over the cooling ash of the fire and drew a circle with the pointed end.

“A soul, as it should be,” she murmured, then bisected it with a wavy line down the center. “A soul torn,” she said, and then she halved one of the halves. “Your soul in this time, and…” she swiftly drew a line down the diameter of the quarter-circle, and then another line, another and another, and then a final, very small line, and rested the end of the bone in the very small space she had created in the greater circle. “Your soul as you rendered it in the future, and as you brought it with you here.” 

It was all nonsense, but looking at her crude drawing still made him uneasy.

“And the boy,” she added, and moved her stick into the portion two sizes larger than that smallest part.

“The soul portions are fed—or starved—by their containers, and feed back to the primary piece.” She lifted the bone and pointed at Voldemort. “The inhuman containers made you, already emotionally deficient, worse still. But the human...this particular human...the opposite.”

Voldemort looked at her coldly, crossing his arms. “You think Harry—the boy—has infected me?”

She shrugged, but had the gall to look amused; the pointed tooth visible in her sneer.

“That is not what this is,” Voldemort snorted. “I…” he looked away from her and blinked. He wasn’t going to say it. He craved Harry. He had lain in bed with the scrawny idiot for almost a day and night. What else could explain that but magic, of the most sinister kind?

“In this, I do empathize,” Hilda said, shrugging again and looking back at her fire. “I have never desired companionship, nor missed it when it was gone. Perhaps there would have been someone who would awaken that in me as it was in you.”

Voldemort recoiled as though stung. Awakened? Could she be more ridiculous?

“It’s something to do with the ritual,” he insisted, though a few intrusive thoughts were impinging on this conclusion. For example, when he’d spilled himself to thoughts of Harry, or even before that, lingered in the mundanity of Harry’s mind for hours.

A chill ran through Voldemort.

Subordinate, she’d said, when he’d first visited her. And she hadn’t meant only to Tom Riddle.

“I’ll kill him,” Voldemort murmured. The thought relaxed him at once.

“Unless you performed the ritual inadequately, that is no longer an option.”

She was right, as he would have known within a moment or two. He’d sealed his soul piece to Harry; he could not destroy one and preserve the other.

Hilda emitted soft little cackle, as though by accident. “I did warn you.”

“I don’t think something you drew in the dirt can be considered good evidence,” Voldemort commented, getting his composure back. She looked weary.

“You don’t grow much, do you? More stump than tree.”

****

He didn’t believe her. And yet.

He felt something very intense toward Harry. It was more than merely marveling at a human Horcrux. It was more than the thoughts which had him touching himself in a furious, desperate pursuit of an orgasm at least once a day. It was the feelings, themselves. The—the emotions to which he had spent all his previous decades happily immune.

Thankfully, they weren’t totally inhibiting. He didn’t feel guilt or any of the other irrational impulses he’d seen cripple others’ perfectly natural ambitions. But he did feel—he was, with Harry, possibly—

When he returned to his rooms, Harry was curled up on the bed, looking very small in repose. Voldemort sat near him, alongside the tight curve of his back, and Voldemort slid his hand gently from between his shoulder blades and up his nape. Harry’s thick hair parted and slid warm and smooth between Voldemort’s cool fingers. Harry was always so warm.

At his touch, the boy’s posture relaxed. The fist near his face uncurled and his sleeping frown transformed for a half-moment to a slight smile.

Within a few moments, all the tension from their separation flowed from Voldemort, and in its absence he was resigned to what he had the misfortune of feeling and what he must do.

Voldemort could not kill Harry now, but there were other ways to remedy mistakes, when one was apparently capable of traveling through time.

Then, when all that was sorted, he’d see whether he’d further his future reign best from 1943, or back in 1996.

**Chapter 10.2**

**Subsequent Interaction with the Magically Radicalized Area May Lead to Identical Results; or, we meet Murray.**

Murray had trained for the Phoenix Protocol, but he had never expected to actually perform it.

He’d thought he’d spend his whole career as an Obliviator doing the ordinary work, which he thought of as noble, if not particularly titillating. The work he was doing that fateful day before the metaphorical Reducto hit the metaphorical pile of Hippogriff dung. He had his wand tip against the forehead of a dreamy-eyed ten-year-old boy who had just seen his friend spontaneously set a bully on fire, and behind him were a long line of other witnesses. Murray was very good with the delicate spell—not that the other Obliviators weren’t, but he knew he was especially well-thought-of because they always called him in when the minds in need of addling were particularly vulnerable.

He had just finished with the boy, who was wandering toward the end of the alley to resume his pleasantly ignorant life, and was about to start on the next one when someone caught his arm.

Turning, Murray saw the perpetually strained expression of his supervisor, Kitzmiller, who looked even dodgier than usual. “Murray,” he said tersely, “You’re needed at the Ministry.”

Murray wasn’t based out of London, so he only went in for the occasional, intensely boring staff meeting or group training, all of which he loathed. He was a solitary creature and his favorite part about his work was that he did it independently. Unless things were particularly slow, they weren’t staffed to have more than one Obliviator per job.

“I’ve just got to finish up,” Murray said, gesturing vaguely toward the rest of the kids with vacant expressions in his line-up.

“I’ll take it from here,” Kitzmiller said, shaking his head. “You have to go now. It’s the...it’s a special protocol.”

Murray’s puzzled frown fell away as his jaw dropped. There was only one special protocol for Murray, though he didn’t think Kitzmiller knew about it.

“You mean…?”

“Go,” Kitzmiller interrupted, wincing, as though Murray had been about to say something that would hurt his ears.

Murray wasn’t particularly good at Apparition, so he used the public points, even though it meant three journeys and he felt fairly ill upon arrival in London. The Ministry was unusually quiet, which set Murray on edge. He hurried into the elevator and let it carry him to the Department of Mysteries.

The Obliviators were without a natural home in the Ministry’s departmental structure. Like other odd subdivisions which didn’t have an obvious tie to a particular department, they were placed with the Department which, at the time and to the particular Minister in charge, seemed to have the least to do. Since no one in the Department of Mysteries could talk about what they were doing enough to argue the point, the Obliviators were therein assigned.

It rarely mattered to whom the Obliviators technically reported, since most of them were constantly in the field with little cause to assemble in one place. As far as the arguable lack of oversight, it never troubled anyone in the Ministry because only the Obliviated Muggles could have complained, and for a host of reasons they wouldn’t know why or to whom they should.

It should have been an easy, if tedious, job with very little risk of adventure, but apparently the Phoenix Protocol had been invoked. It meant that something had occurred which warranted wide scale Obliviation, achieved by some sort of super-Time-Turner. Murray’s training hadn’t gone into much detail.

The elevator dinged and Murray stepped out, straightened his collar, and hoped he didn’t break out into one of his nervous sweats. It was cloyingly warm in the obsidian hallway. He knew better than to trust his judgment as to which of the identical, revolving doors was which, so he waited until a tall, thin man with luminous pale blue eyes opened one of them and stared at Murray in the Unspeakable version of a gesture.

They really were the oddest sort.

Hurrying forward, Murray was too conscious of the unnatural silence to voice any questions, but several of them were burning to be asked. Beyond the door was a surprisingly nondescript hallway, with a scarred wooden floor and ordinary lath-and-plaster walls, as though all the money for the provocative department remodel had been expended on the vestibule.

The tall Unspeakable was drifting down the hallway and still hadn’t said anything. Murray swallowed nervously and peered at the austere portraits lining the walls. They were all as silent as his escort, and wore the traditional Unspeakable robes, which didn’t appear to have changed in style in a few centuries, based upon the tiny brass plates which depicted years of death spanning several dozen decades.

At the end of the hallway was an intersecting corridor lined with eight doors, and another Unspeakable. This one was an ordinary height, with a lustrous head of grey-streaked red hair and a full, neatly shaped beard in the same colors. He watched them come and, when they were within a few yards, he broke the silence in a deep, booming voice.

“Merlin, it took you long enough. What kept you? You’re licensed to Apparate, aren’t you?”

“I...had to Apparate in a series,” Murray explained awkwardly. “I’m, um, Devin Murray, as you, um, seem aware.”

Apparently Murray was wrong to anticipate an exchange of names at that point. “We are,” was all the red-haired Unspeakable said.

“Time,” said the tall one, pointing to one of the doors. His voice was ethereal and high, exactly as eerie as Murray would have imagined. The other one sighed.

“Yes, yes. Murray, you’ll go first.” He pushed Murray around by the shoulders toward the indicated door. “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe, by Unspeakable standards.”

Murray had no idea what that caveat was supposed to mean. That sweating he’d been waiting for was starting. It carried with it a sharp, fearful smell he hated. He went through the door.

There was, at once, the sound of a thousand ticking clocks. On the platform in the middle of the room was some sort of large, shimmering sphere, and inside it something small—a bird?—seemed to be rising and falling, but Murray couldn’t make out much more detail than that.

“Murray!” exclaimed the red-bearded Unspeakable, who had come into the room behind him. “Deja vu?”

Murray frowned; the sound of the clocks was going to get to him, he could tell. “No?”

“Ah, well, that’s all right. It’s just a pet theory I have. Now, I know you think you’re here to cast some kind of super-Obliviate, but in fact we just need you to complete a time loop.”

The clocks really were too loud. Murray winced. “What?”

“Yes. We’ve reviewed the memories and we’re quite sure. It happens all the time, strangely enough.”

“I don’t…”

The Unspeakable was propelling Murray toward the sphere, which definitely contained a bird. Before Murray’s eyes, it floated to the bottom of the sphere and sealed itself into an egg, which trembled then hatched and expelled the bird all over again.

Murray began to have a very bad feeling; the sweating intensified.

“What about a...time loop?”

“One thing we know for sure, our past—your future—Murray didn’t know anything then that you don’t know now, so I’m sorry but I won’t be answering any of your questions. We don’t have much time. All the echoes of the randomized time travel that should allow you to follow them to 1943 will wear off before too long.”

“What?” They were uncomfortably near the sphere now, which actually seemed to be a glass bell jar. The tall Unspeakable had materialized just to Murray’s left; he grasped Murray’s limp arm and pressed something cool and metal into his damp hand.

A Time-Turner, freshly wound.

“I don’t—“ Murray protested one last time, but the bearded Auror put a hand firmly behind his back and shoved, setting Murray so badly off-balance he couldn’t stop himself from stumbling forward. He passed through the barrier of the bell jar just as the Time-Turner began to glow and vibrate with all its magical might.

****

It felt like falling, and also like flying, though it had been a long time since Murray sat on a broom. In fact, he felt like the hummingbird—falling, in a loose spiral through oblivion, and then, when he reached the end of some arbitrary loop, he was caught up and flung in reverse. Not flying, then; just the inverse of a fall.

And then it was over. Murray stood in the clock-and-hummingbird room, which no longer had clocks or hummingbirds, and three Unspeakables watched him from close by in the quiet, empty chamber. The Time-Turner was still and dormant in his hand.

“Set down your wand,” sniffed one of the Unspeakables, a witch with dark hair shaved close to her scalp and a bright green tattoo on her cheek. Her wand was in hand but not yet raised.

Murray complied, which meant he first had to draw his wand, the Unspeakables watching closely. Then he set it by his feet. As he rose from the crouch he asked, uncertain, “Is it really 1943?”

“Yes,” said another Unspeakable, with white-blond curls and the deep pink irises of an albino. She drew her wand and summoned Murray’s to her.

“We have some questions,” said the first witch, seeming relieved to have Murray disarmed, and the more she studied him the more she seemed to relax. Murray understood that he was not a threatening person, even having just done something magic shouldn’t allow him to do. He was barely five feet tall and had the unfortunate, recurring experience of being dubbed “baby-faced.”

“Are you—” blurted the third Unspeakable, a fresh-faced wizard with the little silver sash of a trainee. “Are you one of the dark lord’s men?”

Recalling what he knew of the politics of 1943 with a grimace, Murray shook his head. “I have nothing to do with Grindelwald,” he assured them.

“Smith—” began one of the witches, but the wizard didn’t notice their effort to stop him.

“I meant Voldemort,” he murmured.

Murray’s eyes narrowed. Then he remembered some of the nonsense that the Unspeakables in his time has rattled off before forcing this journey on him. Allow you to follow them to approximately the same time.

Who had they sent him after? Surely not...surely not You-Know-Who?

Merlin. Murray was only half-sure what a time loop was, but he was completely sure there had been some kind of mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your feedback keeps us going! Thanks for reading. <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks as always to Mith for the beta! <3

**Chapter 11.1**

**Fear is a Landscape of Peaks and Valleys; or, Harry is at the end of his rope**

The main thing Harry learned from waking up in Voldemort’s arms was that he had to find a way to never, ever do it again.

Mercifully, after hovering over him while he ate, Voldemort left. Harry prowled the rooms, wondering what would happen if he left to go to the library. He wanted to pick up where he’d left off in his research, except that now, he also wanted to learn as much as he could about time travel. He wasn’t _great_ at reading and looking things up, but how many times had Hermione saved them, either with something she found herself or by enlisting Harry and Ron to assist, shoving books under their noses for hours on end?

As always, thinking about Hermione and Ron made Harry weak with misery, so it was a few minutes before he was thinking clearly again. He didn’t see how he could leave Voldemort’s room before the end of the weekend; after all, he was supposed to be at the Potter House.

He half-heartedly revised, but it wasn’t long before he was distracted, again, by the sight of Andrews’ trunk.

Andrews was an Auror. Andrews was a skilled enough wizard to have been hired to teach DADA at Hogwarts, which was presumably a coveted position before it came to be associated with a curse.

Harry had a potential ally—a strong potential ally—just a few feet away. How impossible could opening a warded trunk really be?

It was comically easy, as it turned out. Harry approached the trunk with his wand drawn, and it sprang open. Harry froze, mouth agape, then hurried forward to peer down into the trunk with his heart in his throat. He really didn’t think he wanted to see what state Andrews was in.

But the Auror was untied, sitting on a stool, blinking up at Harry. The interior of the trunk appeared to be about ten feet by ten feet, and an open picnic basket sat at Andrews’ feet, spilling over with shiny red apples, a loaf of bread and the dark green ruffle of fresh kale. A warm ball of light illuminated the entire space.

It was as close to cozy as Harry could imagine the inside of a trunk being. Which was to say, not very, but certainly better than he’d expected.

“Is it just you?” Andrews called cautiously. His gaze flickered back and forth past Harry, looking for signs of Voldemort, no doubt. He slowly stood up from the chair, eyes gleaming. “Is he gone?”

“Yes, I’m Harry. He’s gone, but I don’t know for how long.” Harry raised his wand, determinedly, after stealing a glance at the door, imagining Voldemort walking through at any moment. “I’ll Levitate you out.”

Andrews looked alarmed, and then very pale. He lifted a hand toward Harry to stay his wand. “No. That’s not...erm, I don’t think it will work.”

“I’m a dab hand at it,” Harry assured him, setting aside memories of his too-enthusiastic casting once almost braining Ron in the common room.

“All right,” Andrews said cautiously, and crossed his arms and braced himself for Harry’s spell. Harry cast, and Andrews rose at a swift but steady pace out of the confines of the trunk, then clear of the lid. Harry canceled it, and he landed neatly on his feet.

“You are quite good at that,” Andrews remarked, looking impressed. “How’s your Disillusionment?”

It wasn’t great; Harry and always depended on the cloak. And magic that could assist children in their mischief weren’t emphasized in the general curriculum at Hogwarts.

“May I?” Andrews reached for Harry’s wand, and Harry almost didn’t hand it over. But Andrews sighed, obviously impatient—Voldemort could come in any moment—but didn’t look angry. Somehow, that reaction comforted Harry, and he passed over the Holly wand handle first.

Harry felt the cold sensation of a thorough Disillusionment after Andrews tapped his head, then Andrews returned his wand. Harry was startled; surely it made more sense for the DADA expert to be armed. But he felt so much better holding it that he couldn’t bring himself to hand it back.

“Let’s go, then,” murmured the shimmering air where Andrews had been, and Harry nodded, then remembered Andrews couldn’t see him, either.

“Okay,” he said.

Harry felt Andrews brush past him and saw the handle twitch beneath the invisible weight of Andrews’ hand, but it was…

...locked and warded. Of course.

It had been easy to open the trunk because the trunk wasn’t the cell in which Andrews was imprisoned; they were imprisoned together in Voldemort’s quarters.

They checked the doors, then the windows, while Andrews remained silent and invisible and Harry, therefore, felt quite alone with his guilty despair.

“You’ll have to get back in the trunk,” Harry murmured, taking his wand back after Andrews used it to cast several spells, all of which failed in the face of Voldemort’s wards.

Harry terminated their Disillusionments with a simple _Finite_ just in time for Andrews to give him a sharp look.

Harry shrugged miserably. “I don’t know what else to do. He could come back any minute, and…”

“He won’t be happy I’m out.” Andrews nodded, face grim, and then gave the open trunk a long, inscrutable look.

“What we need is someone to help us from out there, Harry,” said Andrews. “Has Dumbledore returned?”

Harry sighed, shoulders drooping. “Not last I knew.” It could have happened while Harry had been stuck in Voldemort’s rooms, but the pessimistic part of him didn’t think so.

“Then you may need to go to him,” Andrews said solemnly.

“To the _war_?” Harry exclaimed, disbelieving. But he felt his heart start up again, somewhere between hopeful and panicked.

“I know it sounds extreme,” Andrews said, “But Dumbledore is the only member of the faculty I’m certain isn’t willing to compromise his values. I don’t know who else we can trust.”

Harry swallowed, the full weight of what Andrews was suggesting settling heavy on his shoulders. “He said he’d kill you, or...he _skinned your arm_.”

Andrews winced. “I recall,” he said faintly, then met Harry’s eye with a steady gaze. “I’ll be alright, Harry. Or I won’t. But neither of us are getting out of this if you don’t do something. We’ve no choice.”

Harry felt a surge of admiration for this stranger. It made his throat feel tight and his eyes prickle, so he sucked in a breath through his nose and tried to be half as brave. “I don’t know where he is,” he said. “I mean...I was there, but it was a secret place.”

Of course, Harry thought about the spell: _Expecto Deliverum_ had taken him to Dumbledore once; would it do the same a second time?

Andrews was quiet for a long moment, and then he spoke very slowly. “You’ll need to wait until tomorrow. Then something will happen that will help you know where Dumbledore will be.”

Harry’s brows rose. “What?”

“Something is going to happen tomorrow. You can endure ‘til then, can’t you?”

Harry thought of the previous night, and Voldemort’s touch, and shuddered. He also thought, guiltily, of how his body had been flooded with good feelings and the sense of safety, an all-encompassing, false comfort that he’d never felt before. “I can,” he admitted quietly. “What is it that’s going to happen?”

“I’m not really sure about that, only that there will be something,” Andrews said, and when he noted Harry’s perplexed look, he shrugged apologetically. “It’s just something I know as an...Auror. They never put all the information in any one head, you see.”

That part did make sense, so Harry relaxed a bit, studying the interior of the trunk again with concern. “Are you going to be all right in there?”

Andrews smiled calmly. “Yes. It’s much more comfortable since last night. It’s almost as though someone negotiated for me to get a few luxuries.”

Harry smiled back, but weakly. “Well, it wasn’t that hard. I mean, he must need you to be okay, too.”

“Thank you for your efforts, Harry—the, accommodations, and also for trying to get me free. Dumbledore will know what to do.”

Harry was unnerved by Andrews’ calmness, but he supposed it was a quality they cultivated in Aurors. At least he had the humanity to have trembling hands when he leveled himself back over the edge of the trunk so Harry could Levitate him into a gentle landing.

Harry was willing to hope that Andrews was right; Dumbledore always did seem to know what to do. Of course, in this time Dumbledore was not quite the trusted figure Harry had come to know. He thought uneasily of the way that Dumbledore and Ariadne had sidestepped Harry’s efforts to warn them about Voldemort, and the serious way they had explained the integrity of time. Would it really be any different now?

“Be careful, Harry, and good luck,” Andrews said, voice oddly stilted again as it traveled up to Harry from the bottom of the trunk.

Harry nodded, and very reluctantly closed the trunk.

He roamed the chambers as though a time portal might open if he wished for it hard enough, and launch him back to the 1996 version of Hogwarts where he belonged. He listlessly picked apart the food that appeared on the little table via elf magic so that Voldemort might believe he had eaten some of it. He stared at his books but couldn’t focus enough to even pretend to revise.

When his anxiety finally gave in to boredom, some time long after the clock face read midnight, some combination of instinct and stupidity led him to lie down in the bed where he’d slept with Voldemort. As though a part of him was soothed just by the memory of Voldemort’s touch, he soon fell asleep.

****

It was completely idiotic, to have fallen asleep in Voldemort’s bed. Maybe if he’d fallen asleep on the sofa, Voldemort would, upon his return, have left Harry there rather than disturb his sleep. He was really _obsessed_ with Harry sleeping enough. But instead, when Harry woke up, the older wizard was clasping him to his chest.

And of course, that insidious bond between them was _fed_ by the contact, and Harry felt warm, cherished, and safe, instead of the more rational response of terror and disgust.

He might have stayed under its spell for several moments at least, had he not felt a distinct hardness pressed snugly against his right buttock. The warm feelings were gone in an instant and didn’t return.

Harry’s eyes widened and every muscle in his body tensed; even his toes curled. He had been starting to think of Voldemort and Tom Riddle as distinct from one another—which made no sense, as they were the same, horrible person, and he _knew_ that—and therefore he hadn’t felt that panic, that suffocating hand on his throat, in Voldemort’s presence as he had in Tom Riddle’s. Not until just now.

Harry moved as slowly as he could make himself, determined not to rouse Voldemort. At the same time, he felt sure that his noisily pounding heart alone would wake him. It sounded like thunder to Harry. But somehow he managed to extract himself, barely moving Voldemort’s arms in the process, sliding his calf out from where it had lain tangled between Voldemort’s, shuddering at the feeling of friction on his skin.

And then he was free, free to roll across the bed and lie panting on his side, studying Voldemort for signs of disturbance. Voldemort only lay, motionless except for his breathing, and now that there was some physical distance Harry felt the sharpest edge of his panic wane. He thought very hard about what to do next.

Andrews had told him to wait. But Andrews didn’t know about the spell. Harry picked up his wand from the nightstand where Voldemort must have put it before he joined Harry in the bed. The familiar feeling of its grip was, as always, reassuring on a visceral level.

Harry traced the wand movement in the air, thinking with all his heart of happiness and security as he would to conjure a Patronus, and then he incanted. “ _Expecto Deliverum_!”

The first time he’d cast in the library for practice, he’d barely changed his position in the room, except to wind up slightly nearer to Hermione. Ron, who was also there, had been deeply offended.

This time was the same. Harry had been standing well away from the bed, but now he was standing directly beside it. On Voldemort’s side. Close enough he could reach out and touch the lax fingers of Voldemort’s hand.

Apparently whatever Voldemort had done to bond them was stronger than one of the _Twelve Great Spells_ , as Professor Dumbledore had admiringly referred to it. Harry stalked back across the room and stared down at the wand in his fist, almost accusingly. But nothing was ever quite that simple, was it, even with magic involved?

Harry looked at the clock—it was still slightly too early to go out in the corridors without risking getting in trouble for breaking curfew, and he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself. So he sat near his books and lit the lamp by the table, so that when Voldemort woke up Harry could pretend to be revising.

It didn’t matter, as it turned out, because what woke Voldemort a few minutes later was an owl hammering desperately at the window.

Harry was on his feet, alarmed, as Voldemort stirred, sat up, then went to the window without a single sign of drowsiness. He opened the window and the owl delivered its message and immediately flew off.

“What is it?” Harry asked, tentative.

“It’s from the Ministry,” murmured Voldemort. “Alerting staff to secure the school and not permit students to Floo out. Apparently there was a recent battle with mass casualties.” Voldemort sounded interested, but clinically so. As though the figures were particularly interesting outcomes in a Potions experiment on mice.

_Something is going to happen_ , Andrews had said. Harry fidgeted with his robes—he’d hastily dressed while Voldemort slept, before—and wondered if this was it. His way of knowing where Dumbledore would be.

“Was it one of the known war zones?”

“No,” Voldemort said absently. He seemed to have finished reading, and now that Harry had his full attention again, his eyes narrowed. “Have a certain interest in news of the war, do you?” He looked knowing, and unpleasant. Harry realized he’d played this all wrong. Voldemort _knew_ he was asking because of Dumbledore.

But, Harry reminded himself, struggling to stay calm, that was _all_ Voldemort knew.

“I just hope he’s okay,” Harry murmured, deciding on something close to the truth. “Do you think…?”

To Harry’s surprise, his diversion seemed to work. Voldemort scoffed and rolled the letter back into its ribbon. “It will take much more than crossfire to kill Albus Dumbledore. He’s very much alive in our time.” He grimaced. “I doubt we’ve changed events in this time that much, as of yet.”

Harry frowned. “Do you think we _can_ change things?” He remembered how seeing the Watch Fire’s vision had forced the word _Slytherin_ from his throat. Wouldn’t that law control his every action here? He had seen quite a lot of the future of wizarding Britain, and its inhabitants, after all.

“Enough questions,” Voldemort said curtly. “Now, I hope you had enough rest”—his eyes raked Harry’s fully-clothed form without identifiable emotion—“because we’re going down now. The Headmaster will most certainly call some sort of inherently non-productive meeting so the staff can all vent their panic and, in so doing, exacerbate it.”

Voldemort took his Polyjuice and dressed while Harry gathered his texts and refused to look up, and then he waited for Voldemort by the door. He tried not to reveal how desperate he was to go through it, but of course Voldemort noticed anyway. He paused with his hand on the latch. Harry could feel the weight of his expectant look, but he stubbornly stared at the swaying robes around Andews’ copied knees.

Voldemort waited, and after a few long moments, Harry looked up into his face. It was particularly disorienting given his recent conversation with Andrews, but the expression there was quite familiar from his time with Voldemort, and he thought even if they were standing side by side, he’d know one from the other.

“You recall our rules,” Voldemort murmured. He reached out with Andrews’ warm, blunt fingers and held Harry’s chin. “Don’t you?”

Harry’s eyes widened, but the panic from earlier that morning didn’t return. Instead, the bond fed him pleasant feelings, which he found strange when it wasn’t Voldemort’s cool, slender fingers he felt on his skin.

“Yes,” Harry said quietly. _Something will happen today_ , he reminded himself. He could wait a few hours, couldn’t he?

“Good,” said Voldemort, and let go of Harry. When he opened the door, Harry could barely keep himself from running through it, but instead he stepped through after Voldemort and waited in the corridor for him to close and ward the door.

“Did you have a pleasant weekend?” Voldemort asked, his back to Harry. For a moment Harry’s mouth hung open, but then he realized they were back in character.

“Yes, it was good to be home,” he said in a rush. Voldemort sighed as he turned back and gave Harry a pitying look.

“It’s very brave of you to say that, when I’m sure supporting your family in a difficult time is so very taxing,” he murmured.

Oh, right. Harry had forgotten the details of the weekends-at-home cover story.

“It’s better than worrying about them, when I’m not there,” he said slowly, and Voldemort gave a tiny approving nod.

“That makes perfect sense. Shall I walk with you to the Great Hall?”

“No,” Harry said—too quickly, based on the way Voldemort’s jaw tightened. “But thank you,” Harry hastened to add. “I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time, Professor.”

So they parted ways—Voldemort headed toward Dippet’s office, Harry to breakfast. At the last minute Harry realized his trunk and possessions were still in Voldemort’s rooms, so he’d have nothing to take with him when he left. But then he remembered nothing important was in there, only the new and absurdly high-quality clothing and supplies with which Mary Potter had provided him.

****

At breakfast, Harry was grateful when an empty place on the bench appeared beside Marigold, and he took it without having to be anywhere within earshot of Tom Riddle.

She looked pale and grim, but managed her usual smirk as Harry slid onto the bench. “Potter,” she said quietly, then looked back at the copy of the _Prophet_ she was sharing with the girl sitting next to her. Harry blinked at the headline and tried not to be too obvious, picking up his fork when a place setting and a platter of scrambled eggs appeared in front of him. The smell of the food turned his stomach, but he managed to put something in his mouth and chew without really tasting it.

“We shouldn’t be losing people, because we shouldn’t _be there_ at all,” a fourth-year witch muttered under her breath. Harry didn’t know her name, but recognized her from Walburga Black’s inner circle. The paper was arranged in such a way that it was easiest for her to read it, and she seemed to be finished, because she shoved it away in disgust and Marigold quietly turned it around.

“At least it’s no one you know,” said the boy on her other side, shrugging carelessly and spearing a piece of sausage which he folded into his mouth in one bite. Harry thought the disgust on the witch’s face when she looked at him could be equally attributable to his eating habits as his political opinions, but didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he spent a moment with his surprise that there was, apparently, some sympathy at the Slytherin table for the volunteers from Wizarding Britain who were siding against Grindelwald. But then again, he had learned in the past days that there was more complexity of feeling in his erstwhile House than he had expected to find there.

“Let’s not spoil our peasants’ breakfast,” said Marigold, who seemed to be finished reading, too. She grimaced at her plate. “What is this, stale bread?” She poked her toast distrustfully.

“Everything all right at home, Potter?” Gregory Goyle was leaning over the table to peer past several people at Harry.

“Fine,” said Harry, pulling the paper toward him. It was all right to be curious; obviously everyone was. “Thank you for asking.”

_Ninety-One Dead Or Missing After Bloodiest Battle Yet Against Dark Lord Grindelwald_

Harry scanned the rest, but nothing about a location was mentioned. He supposed they didn’t want people Apparating in and poking around. It seemed like the sort of thing that would cause alarm and morbid curiosity, particularly for the relatives of those ninety-one people, who could be anyone involved in the war based upon the article’s vague descriptions.

Harry’s next thought was that he knew someone who fit that description: two someones. His eyes darted to the Hufflepuff table, where sure enough, Oswin and his brother sat side-by-side, both faces pale and the younger boy’s streaked with tears.

Before he knew it, Harry was on his feet and walking over to them. He didn’t know what he’d say, only that he had to say _something_. Oswin was the only person who had really been selflessly nice to Harry at Hogwarts. The least Harry could do was let him know he was thinking of him.

As Harry crossed the room, though, the Hufflepuffs were beginning to get up to leave as one. They seemed to come and go in a unit, like a school of fish. Harry only just happened to catch Oswin’s eye, and to Harry’s surprise, Oswin smiled weakly and waved off his friends, walking over to meet Harry halfway near the abandoned end of the Ravenclaw table.

“Haven’t heard anything from your mum, then?”

Oswin shook his head, and Harry grimaced.

“I’m really sorry. I hope she’s all right.”

“Thanks. Me too.” Oswin looked restlessly around the room, then fixed Harry with a shrewd look and lowered his voice. “Could we go somewhere a bit more...private?”

Harry nodded, curious, and they crossed the Great Hall and walked several paces down the corridor that led to the exit most students used to go to the Greenhouses. No one was there now.

“Listen, Harry. I don’t like to make assumptions, but you _are_ a Slytherin, so, presumably you could keep a secret?”

“Um,” Harry said, thinking fast. But he didn’t think Oswin was going to tell him something that would interest Voldemort. “Yeah. I can.”

“I can’t say anything in Hufflepuff. Secrets aren’t...you know, it’s just not a thing, in our House, to let someone do something that you think isn’t safe, or right, just because someone asks you not to tell.”

“Okay. Well, I can keep a secret, I think.”

Oswin hesitated, looking Harry hard in the eye for a half-moment, then nodded decisively. “Okay. I trust you. I’m going to leave tonight, and go find my mother. Only, I need someone to help distract the prefects so I can slip past their patrols and get to the Forest.”

Harry’s heart beat a little faster. “You know where she is?” he whispered. “You know where they’re fighting from?”

Oswin nodded.

Harry swallowed. “Would you...if I can figure out a way to distract the prefects, like you said, would you take me with you?”

Oswin was visibly startled. “You want to go to the _war_?” At Harry’s nod, he looked more confused still. “Is there someone you care about there, too, then?”

“Yes,” Harry said, which was true. He _did_ care about Dumbledore. But because deceiving Oswin even a little seemed wrong, he didn’t leave it at that. “I need to find Professor Dumbledore. I need his help with something very important.”

He wasn’t sure what he would say if Oswin asked him to explain further. He probably couldn’t say anything else; it was dangerous—terribly so—to have said as much as he had. The thought that Voldemort could exact Harry’s punishment for disobedience upon _Oswin_ was a horrifying one.

But Oswin didn’t ask. His eyes were very wide, but he nodded and looked down. Harry thought Oswin might decide Harry was crazy, and politely tell him to forget he’d ever brought up leaving the school at all. But after a moment, when he looked up again, he had a grim little smile.

“You are quite good on a broom, aren’t you?”

**Chapter 11.2**

**Passion is the Enemy of Reason; or, Voldemort realizes that Harry is missing and overreacts, just a bit**

They met at dark, which was shortly before curfew, and walked briskly up to the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower. Oswin was flushed, but smiling, giddy over the imminent rule-breaking, which didn’t seem to be something he practiced very often.

“Hi, Harry,” he murmured. “I’m so lucky that you want to come too. This was the best plan all along, but I’m just not a good enough flyer. And in a lurch, my memory is the first thing to go.”

Harry knew the plan, so he knew where they were going. But he hadn’t anticipated how, the closer they got to Gryffindor Tower, he’d feel such longing. He couldn’t help but feel more at home—even the portraits hadn’t changed much in just a few decades—and his subconscious was soothed by the sense of routine as he scaled the stairs. But he wasn’t completely at ease; he recalled his last encounter with Septimus Weasley, and couldn’t say it had been pleasant. This Gryffindor House wasn’t the one Harry knew.

“You’ll be alright, as you’re with me,” Oswin assured Harry in a low voice. “Gryffindors _don’t_ hex Slytherins on sight. That’s a terrible rumor.”

Harry was quickly learning that Oswin had a cutting sense of humor, and he laughed quietly, though he was silent once more when they rounded the last bend in the stairs to find Septimus and a younger witch waiting by the fat lady’s portrait.

“Good evening Septimus, Minerva,” said Oswin, with the same warm politeness he used with everyone, and Septimus, who had been looking narrow-eyed at Harry, relaxed and smiled at Oswin.

“Hullo, Oswin.” He looked askance at Harry with a stiff nod. “Potter.”

Harry nodded back cautiously, then looked at the witch. She was vaguely familiar, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she could be… “Minerva McGonagall?” he blurted, then felt faint at her quick nod.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Harry Potter. Nice to meet you,” said Harry tersely. Thoughts of time travel were beginning to turn uncomfortably through his head once more. The idea that Dumbledore had met Harry in the past fit, in a way, with his treatment of Harry in the future. Dumbledore didn’t seem the sort to let a bit of unexplained mystery bother him. Whereas imagining his future Head of House spending seven years pretending her past self hadn’t helped sneak Harry’s future self out of Hogwarts in 1943 was…

Well, it was making Harry’s head hurt. Maybe none of that was right, at all. Maybe the future was changing, at this very moment. Would—could—Harry change with it? His memories, his very existence, perhaps? What was to stop Voldemort from telling Tom Riddle not to cast the killing curse at Harry, but to kill him in a Muggle way that had no threat of rebound?

Harry stared down at his hands, almost expecting them to disappear before his eyes. _How_ hadn’t all this crossed his mind already?

“Harry? Harry?” Oswin was asking, in the tone of someone who has repeated himself several times.

Harry blinked at him. Sweat had broken out on his forehead and he was feeling ill, but his nausea subsided somewhat as he carefully focused on Oswin’s face, the pattern of his freckles, the humblingly intense concern in his warm brown eyes.

“I’m okay,” Harry said after he’d swallowed. “Sorry.”

“If you’re having second thoughts, that’s okay,” Oswin assured him. “You don’t have to go through with this.”

Harry shook his head. “No. I was thinking about something else, that’s all. Something I can’t do anything about.”

Oswin studied him, but that last statement appeared to resonate with him. He looked back at Septimus and Minerva, resolute.

“Shall we, then?”

The Gryffindor common room was painfully familiar Harry didn’t let himself look closely at the tapestries, the furniture or even the braided rug, all of which he knew so well. There were a few other students there, all of whom were studiously ignoring them. Above the curved red sofa, however, was something Harry _hadn’t_ seen before.

Where in his time there would be a bookcase, there was in this time an enormous pair of casement windows, thrown open to reveal the early night sky. Also new was a small-scale replica of the castle and grounds, displayed on a long wooden table where a couple of younger boys were observing a miniaturized Quidditch game on the end that housed the Pitch.

“Are you sure he can do it?” Minerva asked Oswin, giving Harry a critical once-over, then winced when she got to his eyes and saw his half-offended look. “Sorry. But it’s a very tough bit of flying. I don’t think even I could do it with a passenger. It’s this bit that will trip you up if your balance isn’t just right.”

She tapped her forefinger against the tower due North of Gryffindor Tower, then sighed. “All right, this is how you do it.”

She proceeded to show Harry a spiraling route from Gryffindor Tower that would terrify even a bold flyer, a path he understood had been passed down from one Gryffindor flyer to the next who was willing to risk discovery should he or she make the slightest misstep. If one kept to the path, Minerva promised, there wasn’t a single sight-line from the castle or outbuildings where they could be seen. And what seemed to be random loops through thin air above the Forest were deliberate and avoided a couple of ancient wards that the Centaurs continued to monitor.

She went through it three more times, and Harry watched her closely, shutting out all other thoughts. It was like revising at the last minute for an exam; the excitement of the momentous stakes and the time constraints made it easier for Harry to memorize. And this wasn’t some arbitrary list of dates or Potions ingredients, but _flying_. When Minerva finished her third recitation and looked at Harry very solemnly, Harry didn’t hesitate to say, “I’ve got it.”

“Let’s hope so,” Minerva said, and handed over a broomstick that looked more modern than what he’d borrowed from Dippet, but not by a lot. “It’s six weeks’ detention, last time someone was caught, but that’s been years. Maybe Dippet has gotten more sensitive since then.”

Eager to go while the route was still emblazoned in his mind, Harry swung his leg over the broomstick, feeling for a grip that felt natural. He inched forward a bit when Oswin slid in behind him, light and lean but still awkward. Harry couldn’t recall flying with a passenger, but when he kicked off if didn’t take long to find his balance, and he sailed toward the open window, taking a last glance down at Minerva, who was watching him with a stern frown that made her look quite like the Transfigurations Professor Harry would come to know.

“I hope you’re as good a flyer as Oswin thinks, Potter,” were her parting words.

Harry grinned at her, then eased through the window and into the cool dark air beyond it.

On an unfamiliar broom and with Oswin affecting his balance and center of gravity, it was the most arduous bit of flying Harry could ever recall.

But it was still flying. The pure physicality of _flying_ , and keeping exactly to the course Minerva charted for him. He stuck so close to the Tower in the rapid downward spiral around its perimeter, his robes were raked by the rough stone. The point where they angled steeply back skyward in the adjacent Tower _was_ tricky with a passenger, and made doubly so by the odd little hook in the flight pattern to avoid the big window over the central staircase through which anyone could peer out and see them.

Just like when he gotten carried away with the mad sprint after Dippet’s old Snitch, Harry was soothed by the total focus, the abandonment of conscious thought. The wind whipping past, the anticipation of each shift and turn, the extra strain of accommodating Oswin’s weight. But he managed it, and the absolute control of the broom and the flawless execution of the difficult flight path filled Harry with the closest thing to confidence he’d felt in weeks.

When they arrived above the Forest, he was almost sorry.

Oswin’s hands were clutching Harry’s waist, rucking up his robes, and Harry thought they were trembling a bit, too. He patted them awkwardly and craned his head to catch a glimpse of the other boy.

“Are you okay? I didn’t mean to go too fast.” Harry felt badly; he’d forgotten Oswin, along with everything else, in the headiness of the flight.

“I’m fine,” Oswin assured him. “I can’t believe we’ve done it,” he added, making Harry smile again with the same sort of happy little thrill he felt when he was congratulated after a tough match.

Taking stock of their surroundings, Harry found them hard to make out. The night was overcast, so much so there wasn’t even a moon.

“So, where do we go from here?” he asked Oswin, continuing to fly south over the treetops but at a far more leisurely pace, made cautious by the limited visibility.

“A bit to the left, and then—just there.” Oswin reached past Harry’s left arm to point at where a clearing opened in the dense canopy. It was much nearer to the castle than Harry had expected to land.

But the timing was quite fortunate, because as they began to descend but were still a dozen feet from the ground, a raging pain awoke in Harry’s forehead. He was blind and deaf and desperate from it, worse than unconscious, and the two boys and the broom dropped to the damp grass like so many stones.

Harry would later realize he struck his head and fell unconscious when he hit the ground. But in the moment it was a blur of pain in his forehead, awareness he was falling, a vague sense of impact then nothing but a drowning darkness where Voldemort’s voice roared, loud enough to feel and smell and taste.

_Harry Potter! Where are you? I’ll rip you apart and sew you back together so I can do it again, a thousand times. Watching me cut up the Auror just a little made you ill. Imagine what you’ll feel like, when I show you your own, entire hide? I’ll feed you your entrails; I’ll hand your bones to a dog to gnaw. Magic lets the torturer take all the creative license he’d like and can keep you revived to see it all. Liar! Coward. I’ll cut a path of bodies to you and carve your name in each of their hearts. This is what_ you _have wrought, the price of your disobedience. When I find you_ — _and I will, you cannot hide, you pathetic_ —

“Harry!”

Again, it was Oswin’s voice, prying Harry from his own head, but this time it was harder for him to escape.

_Where are you! Open your eyes._ The pain in Harry’s head ratcheted, and he thought his skull could burst with it. _Show me!_

Harry hadn’t had any time to polish his skills at Occlumency; and the might of Voldemort’s anger was so violent it was tangible in a way it had never been before. But when he thought of closing Voldemort out, it just...worked. It was, somehow, _easy._ So easy that when there was only silence, and the quiet little hitching breaths near his ear that told him Oswin was near tears, Harry opened his eyes with perfect trust that Voldemort was parted from him and would not see what Harry saw.

“Are you okay?” he asked Oswin. Sitting up and wincing when the motion awoke a throb in the back of his head, dull and unmagical, and really nothing compared to what the connection to Voldemort had gotten him used to.

“Yes,” Oswin said, his eyes still wide and wet. “You were...you looked…”

“I’m fine now,” Harry whispered, but he was looking in the direction he knew the castle lay, far too near for his comfort. “It’s...um, it has to do with why I need Dumbledore. And why we should hurry.” As though in affirmation, the familiar spike of pain rang through his forehead, but while consciously shielding himself from Voldemort, he found the pain was faint and much easier to bear.

Still… “Right now,” Harry said again, getting to his feet and holding out a hand to help Oswin up. The point of no return was long past. Harry couldn’t think about Voldemort’s threats, or what might happen to the people in the castle. Andrews, or the Gryffindors who deliberately ignored them in the tower, or anyone with whom Oswin had shared a hint of his plans…

All he could do to help anyone, including himself, was find Dumbledore. So he focused stubbornly on that, and on maintaining a barrier between his mind and Voldemort’s. Somehow, miraculously, it continued to work. But he didn’t let his curiosity on that topic distract him either. Oswin dusted some leaves from his trousers and struck off across the dark clearing, and Harry followed.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Mith for beta reading!

**Chapter 12**

**Voldemort finds what he’s looking for**

Oswin led Harry through the clearing, then knelt in the dark and felt around on the ground, moving aside fallen leaves and occasionally picking up a rock, squinting at it, then casting it aside. Harry tried not to feel impatient, but his imagination was running wild, and a part of him was convinced Voldemort would emerge from the trees any moment and dispatch Oswin in a burst of green curselight— _kill the spare_ —before turning his terrible fury on Harry.

But the trees and the clearing remained quiet. No one interrupted them. Harry could hear his own pulse in his ears, and the little noises of Oswin’s breathing and searching. Leaves crunching, the soft sounds of soil being swept aside by his hands. When Oswin murmured, “Aha!” it sounded like a shout.

Harry squinted at the object in his hand. “Is it a Portkey?”

— _Harry_ —

Harry clutched his forehead and reached out blindly for Oswin. “Let’s go!”

The urgency he felt must have been evident, because without argument or hesitation, Oswin’s hand and the small object in his palm made contact with Harry’s grasping fingers, and the Portkey transported them away.

The moments of interrupted time and space during the journey had, in Harry’s previous experience, reminded him of winding together the chains on a swing and then abruptly releasing them, feet tucked up so the force of the unwinding spun him wildly about. It was disorienting, thrilling, and blurred the sights and sounds beyond into inscrutability. It was also quick.

This journey felt longer—unwinding in slow motion instead of with ordinary swiftness. There were spheres of light that could have been cosmos rotating in Harry’s peripheral vision, but when he tried to turn his head, he found he couldn’t look at them directly. They stayed lodged in the corners of his eyes, and everything right in front of him was more than dark; a pitch void.

... _know exactly where to look…_

This wasn’t a void, it was _thoughts_. Harry recalled being in Voldemort’s head before; he knew that’s where he was now. It felt different; he was accessing none of the senses, only the thoughts and feelings.

... _I_ _will find_ …

There was still rage, palpable almost, but there was confidence too. Certainty. As though he already had his target in his sights…

Harry hit the ground on the other side of the Portkey’s path, his elbow striking at the perfect angle to make his entire arm numb for a long moment, then bright with pain from the overloaded pressure point. He rubbed his shoulder concernedly, but didn’t feel the odd lumpiness or the agony of a dislocation, as he once had when Dudley had knocked him halfway down the stairs.

Harry was tangled up with a warm, small body that had to be Oswin’s. They were surrounded by such perfect darkness that Harry wondered for a dizzying moment if they had been lodged somewhere in the space through which the Portkey had taken them.

Then an owl hooted somewhere, and he caught the loamy scent of the soil and rotting leaves in a dense forest.

“What was that?” Harry murmured to Oswin, as they leaned on one another to get to their feet. “It was like a Portkey but...not?”

“Sorry,” Oswin said, invisible in the darkness but his chagrin very evident in his voice. “I would have warned you, but…”

“I seemed like I was in a hurry,” Harry finished wryly. He rubbed his forehead tentatively, but his fingers were dry, and his scar didn’t hurt. Maybe after what Voldemort had done, it no longer would? The intense feeling that had lit up his whole mind seemed to originate in his scar, but it didn’t have the accompanying physical pain.

Harry looked around carefully, but still couldn’t see anything. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Oswin admitted, but didn’t sound very worried about it. “This is is a linked Portkey, which means it takes us to wherever its mate is. But I don’t know why the journey felt so strange. Almost slow?” Before Harry could worry about replying, Oswin bent down abruptly, picked up something from the ground at his feet, and held it up in triumph. “See? My mum left this here, so that must mean it’s a safe spot.” He drew his wand and gave it an experimental wave, then cast _Lumos_ so that Harry could see his grin. “Yep. Warded like crazy. And I’ll bet…” he bent down again, Harry blinking when his wand light went with him and his vision was masked again by darkness. Then Oswin reappeared once more, this time holding a long, narrow bag. “A tent!”

Pitching a tent in absolute darkness was something of a challenge, since unfortunately neither of them seemed to know the spell that would unpack and erect the tent automatically. Still, they managed to get the canvas stretched into a shape that vaguely resembled a tent, and when Oswin parted the flap and went inside cautiously, he soon poked his head back out with a victorious little cry.

“We did it!” he called, and disappeared again. Harry didn’t feel the same sort of relief. If he focused on his scar, he could hear Voldemort’s mind, like a very clear, if distant, melody. He was not frustrated; he was not vexed; under his simmering anger there continued to be only grim satisfaction. He didn’t feel like someone who was looking for someone he could not find, but rather someone whose goal was in sight.

So much so that when Harry peered upward at the trees, he almost expected to see Voldemort there, grinning down, just outside Oswin’s mother’s wards. Waiting.

With a shudder, Harry hastened into the tent. It was much more primitive than the one Harry had shared with the Weasleys. It was warm, though, and filled with soft light. And after rummaging around in a pocket sewn into the canvas, Oswin discovered several cans of assorted fruit and vegetables and even a loaf of bread, wrapped in a Charmed cloth for stasis, which smelled fresh-baked.

Harry hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He couldn’t remember feeling hungry at all since the Time Room. But he became aware that he was inhaling the food at an inhuman pace when he looked up from scraping the bottom of a can of peas to find Oswin watching wide-eyed. The other boy didn’t comment on Harry’s appetite, only quietly chewed a bite of what looked like a hard-boiled egg, speared on a fork in his right hand.

“Do you like pickled eggs?” Oswin asked quietly after he’d swallowed.

Harry’s stomach felt uncomfortably full, now that he’d paused to notice. “That sounds disgusting,” he said honestly.

Oswin laughed, then sniffed as though offended. “Watch what you say about my favorite food, Potter,” he remarked, and then his gaze became wistful and distant. Harry didn’t think it was a stretch to imagine that Oswin was worrying about his mum again, so Harry let him have some silence and room for it, standing up to look around the space more carefully.

It was definitely larger inside than out, it had that in common with the Weasleys’ borrowed tent. And it seemed to be shutting out the quiet, eerie noises of the surrounding forest as well as the chill. There was one set of neatly-made bunk beds along one wall. Harry walked over to finger the coarse—but clean and pressed—cotton of the sheets folded over the upper bunk.

When he turned back to Oswin, the other boy seemed more composed.

“Harry,” he began, then stopped, frowning. He drew his knees up and looped his arms around them. He looked small there, and Harry realized that Oswin had the sort of personality and energy that made him seem bigger than he really was. He was bird-like, just elbows and knees and slightly too-large feet. Harry was terribly fond of him.

“What?” He sat back down too.

“When you, um, fell, off the broom…” he paused as though he wasn’t sure how to put what he wanted to say.

Harry thought he knew, anyway. “It’s nice of you not to mention that I dumped you on the ground too,” he pointed out, in a weak effort to lighten the mood. “Anyway, yeah, it was, um…” he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, which was always the slightest bit sore from their faint weight.

“It’s complicated. And I really can’t say more than that, I’m sorry. But…” Harry grimaced. “If anyone ever asks whether you helped me get out of Hogwarts, Oswin, you should lie.”

Oswin’s eyes were wide. “I thought you were the one helping _me_ get out,” he said quietly.

Voldemort’s eager energy was still at the edge of Harry’s mind, like music played softly a room away. “Your mum is an Auror? I suppose her wards are quite good?”

Now that they were standing still, Harry’s thoughts were circling. _Oswin has never even heard of Voldemort_ , Harry’s insistent inner voice reminded him. And Harry hadn’t even warned him of the danger that Harry’s company could bring.

That realization made Harry’s heart pause, leaden with guilt, then thunder back to life after the skipped beat. It had all seemed to unfold so perfectly, and he’d been so determined after speaking to Andrews that he’d forgotten there were many more lives than Andrews’ at stake. _A path of bodies_ Voldemort had said. _Carve your name in their hearts_.

“Her wards are better than anyone’s,” Oswin promised, pride underlying his uneasiness. “You don’t have to say, Harry, but whomever you’re afraid of can’t hurt you here, I promise. She’ll come any time,” he added. “She said that if I came in through the wards, she would know.”

Harry nodded, thinking uncomfortably that if something _had_ happened to Oswin’s mother, their only notice would be her _not_ coming. Harry wrestled back his anxious thoughts. He would have to trust the wards of an Auror and a soldier. Oswin evidently did.

Harry stared at the bunk beds. It would take longer to get to the tent door from the top, but the upper bunk sat so near the lower that there were distinct cupboard connotations with that shadowy spot. “Can I have the top?” Harry asked in an uneven voice.

“Sure,” Oswin called, sounding hesitant. “Are you alright, Harry?”

Again, Harry felt a wave of self-loathing. Here was Oswin, who was far more deserving of comfort, offering it to Harry instead. But it couldn’t be helped; Harry had pushed himself as far as he could already today. Maybe if he slept a little, gave into this cloying exhaustion, his head would be clearer in the morning.

“I’m alright,” he said, and climbed the ladder with what felt like the last of his strength.

****

The sound of soft voices woke Harry. He sat up to find Oswin and a slender, dark-haired woman. Hearing him stirring, they fell silent and looked up at him.

“Er, hello,” Harry said awkwardly, then quickly descended the ladder and felt better when he wasn’t perched above them on the bed.

“You must be Harry,” said the witch. Her voice was hard, and it wasn’t just her American accent. She had the tone of voice of someone who was angry, but there wasn’t anything menacing about her in the least, so Harry smiled uncertainly.

She sighed and smiled in return. “I’m Tina, Oswin’s mother,” she said. Then she frowned pointedly over her shoulder. “His _very disappointed_ mother.”

Oswin was standing behind her, his face very red under his freckles.

“I just wanted to help,” he muttered, but he looked more ashamed than indignant.

Tina’s look softened and she turned back to slide her arm around Oswin’s shoulders and pull him against her side. “Well, I can appreciate that,” she admitted, blinking fast like people did when they might cry. “But the Portkey was for emergencies— _your_ emergencies—not just when you’re worried, or…”

“Worried?” Oswin interrupted, pulling back from her and rubbing his eyes with the side of his fist. “I was...we thought you might be...we weren’t just _worried_!”

Tina sighed, and turned to hug Oswin in earnest, her chin on top of his head while he sniffed in a loud, wet way that probably meant he was crying. Harry wished very hard to be somewhere else.

“I am sorry,” Tina said. “Now, I need to make arrangements immediately to get you back to school.” She looked to her left, where she studied the blank canvas of the tent wall as though she was seeing the battlefield instead. “We can’t safely get to a Floo from here at the moment, but I think I can owl the Ministry for a Portkey to Hogsmeade.”

Oswin nodded, rubbing his eyes. Harry was relieved a moment by the diffusion of tension, then he realized what Tina had said.

“I can’t go back yet,” he said in a rush. “I have to see Professor Dumbledore.”

Oswin blinked, but barely hesitated before turning to his mother and nodding. “Yes, Mum, Harry must see Professor Dumbledore. It’s urgent.”

Harry didn’t how he’d made such a wonderful friend in such a short time.

“Professor Dumbledore is fighting a war,” she said slowly, looking between them. “Although I’m sure it seems urgent _to you_ , he can’t be pulled away from _the war_ to talk to his students.”

“We can’t say exactly what it is,” Oswin said swiftly, stunning Harry anew. “But trust me, mum, it _is_ important. _Really_ important.” He looked at Harry, who was staring at him in bewilderment, with a grim smile.

“Well,” Tina said, a furrow still in her brow as she looked between the boys like they were two pieces of a puzzle that she couldn’t quite fit. “I’m sure it is, in _your opinion_ ,” she said, sounding very exasperated, like Hermione when Ron and Harry talked about Quidditch instead of revising for an imminent exam they weren’t prepared for. “But,” she added firmly, “there’s just no way.” She stared off to her left again. When she looked back she had a hard resolve in her expression that Harry recognized as the way adults looked when they’d made up their minds. “I’m sorry, Harry. You’re to go back to school as soon as I can get the Portkey, but I’ll be happy to take a message to Dumbledore for you.”

Of course, Harry thought dully, by the time a message got to Dumbledore, he’d be back in Voldemort’s custody and Voldemort would have exacted whatever punishment he had planned. A dull, familiar resignation filled Harry.

“Sorry, Harry,” said Oswin, appearing to recognize—as Harry had—that Tina had given her final word.

Harry imagined arguing with her. _I came here through from the future. The DADA professor is really a dark lord even worse than Grindelwald. He’s only there because of—well, I’m not sure why, something about a bond. If you send me back then there will be no one to stop him and he could hurt Oswin too…_

The story sounded so mad that in his mind’s eye, even Oswin’s unwavering support dissolved into a sort of pitying look, and Tina wouldn’t let him out of her sight until she could personally fold his fingers around a Portkey straight back to Voldemort.

It was better if she believed he was going along with her decision, so that she might give him the opening he needed to go find Dumbledore by himself.

“I’ll write him a letter, thank you,” Harry said to Tina quietly.

She smiled and found him some parchment, quills and ink in one of the tent pockets, then went out to send her own correspondence relating to the Portkey.

By the time Harry had finished his letter, the Scamanders had settled in. Oswin was discussing the Flaming Vera Vine enthusiastically, and Harry realized too late that the story he was beginning to relay featured Harry diving into the clearing on a broomstick like someone with a death wish.

Fortunately, Tina didn’t seem as alarmed by Harry’s role as by the fact her sons had been wrestling with one of the most lethal specimens in magical botany.

“A _mature_ Flaming Vera Vine?” she interrupted, voice slightly shrill.

“Um,” replied Oswin.

Harry cleared his throat, and when they looked over, he held out his letter to Tina.

“Oh, great. Thank you, Harry. I will see he gets it, I promise.”

“Thank you,” said Harry.

“It’s awfully late,” Tina said. “I’ll transfigure something to sleep on, and you two should get back to bed. We may not have a response from the Ministry before tomorrow evening, but just in case, I’ll wait up a while.”

She yawned hugely, and Oswin mimicked her. Then they wrinkled their noses at one another and laughed.

“I’ll stay up a while,” Harry offered, tone as measured as he could manage. “I don’t think I could fall asleep again right now.”

Tina looked unsure, but the dark circles under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept in quite some time and would very much like to.

“All right, Harry. But wake me as soon as you’re feeling sleepy?”

“Yeah, I will,” Harry lied.

Tina transfigured a mattress and positioned it beside Oswin in his place on the lower bunk. Harry sat stiffly in the little chair by the entrance, pretending to read a Muggle paperback that Tina had found for him—“to pass the time”—lighting the page he was staring blankly at with _Lumos._

The time seemed to drag past, but after whispering to one another for a few minutes, Oswin and Tina soon fell silent. Harry made himself wait awhile after that, listening to the quiet sounds of their occasionally stirring blankets and breathing.

When they were finally unmoving except for deep even breaths, Harry held his breath, ducked through the tent flaps, and walked briskly, half-expecting Tina to call him back at any moment. With that distraction on his mind, he was startled by the feeling of something hot on his skin. It was like walking through a spider web someone had lit on fire. He realized after a moment it was the wards, not a curse. When he turned to look back, the tent was nowhere to be seen.

He thought he might swallow his heart. All he could think of was the moment after they’d first arrived and pitched the tent. That sense of Voldemort waiting for him just beyond the wards. He braced himself for Voldemort’s fingers curved into claws, his eyes flashing dangerously bright, the angry hiss of his voice—but nothing happened.

Harry blinked, trying not to think about it. He couldn’t lose his sense of direction. So he continued walking, reining in the urge to run instead. He had to set a sustainable pace.

Tina had looked to her left, not once but twice. Inside the tent, as she’d been standing, her left was west. She’d said they couldn’t safely use the Floo, and hadn’t even mentioned Apparating. She’d reached them roughly six hours after they’d arrived. An owl could reach the Ministry and return with a reply in less than a day.

All that meant they were within Apparating distance of the Ministry, but couldn’t reach it that way. That seemed to mean, Tina hadn’t Apparated to them. She’d walked—or flown, more likely (though Harry hadn’t seen a broomstick).

The sum of all these estimations was that the war was a six hour flight to the west, or nearer.

Or, it was halfway around the world or a hundred yards in the other direction, but Harry couldn’t think of anything else to do.

He wasn’t sure whether he felt better or worse as he walked. The air was bracing and the act of _doing something_ carried a basic satisfaction. Sitting still while feeling Voldemort’s glee as he closed in had been painful.

But the forest felt like a monster towering over and around him. The cold breeze was its breath on his face, the stars winking occasionally through the parts in the canopy its eyes.

Harry walked faster and faster, and then he wasn’t walking anymore. He was running.

_Harry_ , came Voldemort’s voice again. Harry’s mind was a room and Voldemort was an animal scratching at the door. His words were muffled, but Harry, as though hypnotized, strained to catch them, and at the same time he ran faster, as fast as he could. He brushed past tangles of branches and somehow kept from stumbling on the soft ground in almost total darkness.

The mindless fury of Voldemort’s last speech had gone. His voice was silky with satisfaction.

_I see you’re listening now. Excellent; this way, I may say goodbye. I’m almost there. What you have of me, I did not intend to give you. I shall take it back, and then your life will once again be meaningless. And I will take it, too. Farewell, Harry Potter._

Harry stopped running. He leaned against the nearest tree as he gasped for air and his _brain_ throbbed like his whole head was a bruise.

“Where are you?” he said aloud, turning in place to stare blindly in every direction, sure he would see Voldemort materializing from the shadows. But Harry was apparently still alone in the darkness.

Harry had never deliberately seen through Voldemort’s eyes before, but perhaps it was something he could do intentionally if he tried hard enough. If he knew where Voldemort was, it would be much easier to evade him.

Harry closed his eyes. He found the point in his head where Voldemort seemed _present_ , which pulsed with his separate and vivid emotions, and he narrowed all his focus on that spot. Like leaning on a door lodged closed from the far side, it seemed useless at first; but then the obstacle gave to the pressure and he was instantly through.

_The trees and the grass and the living shadows of the unknown forest were gone, replaced by the cool, silent interior of the Department of Mysteries. The vestibule of onyx floor, walls and ceiling, to be exact. Voldemort had his wand shoved under the stubbled, narrow jaw of a middle-aged wizard with a slightly crooked nose and beetling eyebrows._

_“Explain yourself, Murray,” he said coldly. It was strange to hear Voldemort’s voice from inside Voldemort’s mind. It sounded softer than it did in Harry’s ears._

_“I...sir, please...” said the man—Murray, presumably. He stared in horror at Voldemort’s wand hand beneath his nose, which left him painfully cross-eyed._

_“I find you outside Hogwarts, asking for me by my true name,” Voldemort continued in a low murmur, twirling his wand so that the point drilled into Murray’s throat and made him whimper. “Distracting me from my important tasks, and then you claim to have knowledge of my most private object.”_

_“I_ do _, sir…”_

_“And how did you know exactly where to find me?” Voldemort pressed so hard on the wand Harry through the blunt tip could lance through Murray._

_“Because I told him,” interrupted a third voice from behind them. “Forgive me, Lord Voldemort.”_

_Voldemort turned his head slowly to face a uniformed Unspeakable whom even Harry could see was a Malfoy._

_“Alaned,” said Voldemort, as though he was pleasantly surprised to be encountering the young wizard at an evening party, and did not have a sweating Murray pinned to the wall at wandpoint._

_Alaned bowed. It was hard to tell, Malfoys being silver-haired from infancy, but he seemed older than the Lucius Malfoy Harry had known, perhaps in his sixties. The uniform confused Harry further. Was it a disguise? He couldn’t imagine a Malfoy in a career of public service to the Ministry. “I deeply regret the interruption, my Lord.”_

_Voldemort’s eyes narrowed as though he was smiling. “The last time I saw you, I had a very different face. I am surprised you recognize me.”_

_“You had also just cut my colleague in half,” Alaned added. Harry was again gripped with the urge to make some sound, but he had no such outlet, passenger that he was._

_“As the Unspeakable assigned to this thread, I know each of your faces, my Lord,” Alaned said, speaking a little more quickly as Voldemort fixed his wand on a point in the vicinity of his forehead. “My sect know the tapestry of time, my Lord. We accommodate its weave.”_

_Voldemort scoffed. “You certainly_ sound _like an Unspeakable.” He had been drawing tiny circles with his wand, not quite a movement, but similar enough to be making Alaned increasingly pale, which amused Voldemort. Now it went still. “I did always wonder,” he said very quietly, “why it was Abraxas who came to me first.”_

_Malfoy’s eyes gleamed. “Yes. While we are not_ officially _permitted to intervene in even small ways, I...well, my Lord, my loyalty commands I serve how I may.”_

_“But not your loyalty to me,” Voldemort said, releasing Murray and absently lashing him to the wall with a swift_ Incarcerous _. “Like every Malfoy, you serve your name first.”_

_Alaned smiled, but it was a strained expression and he was unable to keep himself from looking cautiously at Voldemort’s wand._

_“It is quite fortunate that my family’s purposes, and my Lord’s, have ever been in perfect accord.”_

_“Hmm,” said Voldemort, raising his wand lazily. “Do you truly presume to know my purpose?”_

_“I knew it would be my family’s honor to assist my Lord in his rise,” Alaned said, very quietly and with most of the artifice on his face gone, leaving his eyes wide and sweat breaking out on his smooth upper lip._

_“And in so doing, your family would ingratiate themselves to me,” Voldemort murmured, but he didn’t sound angry. He lowered his wand and Alaned looked like he could collapse from relief. “I suppose I cannot lament the motives, when the results have been so favorable.”_

_“Thank you, my Lord,” whispered Alaned, almost inaudible, though the harsh breathy syllables resonated off all the stone surfaces in the vestibule._

_Forgotten against the wall, Murray made a muted noise. Voldemort looked over to find him half-strangled by the offhand spell, which had pinned him six inches off the floor and so tightly it must have compromised the circulation to all four of his limbs._

_“_ Finite Incantatem _,” Voldemort said, and Murray dropped to the floor with a thud. He sat up, clutching the side of his head which had struck the stone tile, and reached a shaking hand into his robes. He could have intended to draw his wand, but Harry had learned such things didn’t worry Voldemort. If anything, Voldemort was eager to see him draw, and vaguely disappointed when instead of offering a fight, Murray capitulated. Instead of a weapon, he held out an oversized version of the Time-Turner Hermione had carried in third year._

_“On your person, all along,” Voldemort tutted, but his pulse raced excitedly. “I’ll leave Alaned to decide what shall be done with you.” He summoned the object, which glittered in a golden casing._

_“Inside the Room itself would be best, my Lord,” offered Alaned haltingly. He had cast his own_ Incarcerous _to freshly capture Murray, who blinked mournfully but didn’t protest._

_Voldemort didn’t spare him a glance. He dangled the Time-Turner before his eyes, fingering the cool links of its fine chain. The door to the Time Room opened and Voldemort glided through without looking left or right._

Voldemort was going to use the Time-Turner immediately, Harry realized. Did he intend to travel the several hours back to the time before Harry’s escape, and if he did, would it matter? Or was this Time-Turner capable of the sort of great leap that Harry and Voldemort had inadvertently made back in May?

_Voldemort mounted the dias. The room was slightly less empty than it had been the last time Harry had seen it; someone had placed a row of ticking clocks on a shelf, the seed of the forest of timekeepers which would be there by 1996._

Could the Time-Turner take Voldemort back there, to 1996, without Harry?

Harry imagined it all in a flash: living on, for fifty years, before he had a chance to do anything that wouldn’t disrupt his whole life, or friends’ lives, in some irreversible way. The terrible loneliness of it, knowing that he was trapped in the past leaving Voldemort free to conquer with the Prophecy out of his way...

Through Voldemort’s eyes, a panicked Harry could clearly see the Time-Turner. Unlike Hermione’s, this one did not have a mechanism by which it could be wound. Instead it had a series of three small dials on its face with an inscription above each one: “day,” “month” and “year.” Voldemort’s long white fingers manipulated each dial without hesitation.

The date he input was 30 October, 1981.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hope you'll let us know what you think of the chapter!


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13.1**

**The Unintended Consequences of Venturing Forward in Time Unaccompanied; or, Harry isn’t the only thing Voldemort left in 1943.**

Time travel hadn’t been pleasant in reverse, but sprinting forward felt different. Or perhaps it was the opportunity to take such excellent corrective action which buoyed his mood, but Voldemort sped through time without the stunned horror of the previous trip. 

The only thing that made him uneasy, and which he fought not to dwell upon, were Alaned Malfoy’s obvious machinations. Alaned’s fawning could easily be a mask for a traitorous objective. But then, there wasn’t a trap Alaned could lay which Voldemort couldn’t easily foil. 

As it turned out, there was nothing sinister waiting for him on the other end of his journey. Only Bellatrix.

“My Lord,” she murmured, dropping to her knees and bowing her head before he got a good look at her lovely face. He’d always enjoyed Bellatrix, particularly before she’d passed through the crucible of Azkaban and emerged prone to distraction and with an inconvenient craving for gore. 

“Abraxas said you would come one day, but I didn’t think it was possible…”

“Nothing is beyond my reach,” Voldemort said coolly. He looked around the room for signs of anyone else. Seeing no one, he gave Bellatrix his full attention.

“Only one is here to greet me?” 

“Abraxas trusted no one else, my Lord,” Bellatrix said, lifting her head so he saw her gleaming eyes, black and sharp as onyx. “Please, if I may, my Lord. I’ve never known your task, but I do know you require secrecy. I’ve arranged for you to leave the Ministry unseen.”

Voldemort followed her through the dim corridors which were, as promised, conveniently empty.

When they came out on the streets of Muggle London, Voldemort looked at Bellatrix thoughtfully. She gazed back, rapt, hungry. In a past version of this history she would mourn his being laid low as no one else would. That she would be locked away, prevented from aiding him when she knew very well he hadn’t perished.

But then, it didn’t matter. Voldemort was about to repair the setback, and now this loyal servant would not suffer that long internment in Azkaban.

“Come,” he said, holding out a hand to her. She made a low noise of eagerness and hurried to him, one hand extended as though she would touch him, but she couldn’t bring herself to close the distance. Instead she came near enough his arm just brushed her sleeve and stopped. 

He leaned forward and kissed her left temple, then her right. She held her breath, still as death, but her pulse was pounding so hard he felt its faint throb against his lips. 

When he had dismissed her and he was alone, Voldemort looked up at the buildings around him. He admired all the ways they’d begun to decompose in the forty years of his leap. It was a symbol for the Muggles themselves. Though their numbers grew shocking, they showed every sign of burning themselves out.

Voldemort turned left to Apparate, and nothing happened.

He blinked. Turned left again, with clearer intent, and still nothing happened.

He lifted his wand and examined it for damage. It appeared whole, but it _felt_ like nothing but ordinary wood. A faint ringing swelled in his ears. Rage. It would normally find its outlet through accidental magic, scattering the garbage cluttering the curb in a sudden wind, or bursting the street lights. But nothing happened outside his body, and _inside_ his body he was now aware of a hollow strangeness. His magic wasn’t there.

He reached into his robes with a hand that felt cold and nerveless and found the Time-Turner. Drawing it out, he gazed at it while white-hot thoughts burned through his mind with a fervor he’d never felt before. He’d tear Malfoy in two. He’d hunt each of his ancestors through every century until he strangled the first infant to bear the name in its cradle.

But for now, he thought with cool distance, he could dispatch his errand without need of his greatest powers. He looked around the Muggle streets with a new degree of trepidation, but no true fear. He’d roamed them in more treacherous conditions before he’d gained his wand, and he could do so now. All he needed to do was find his future self and warn him of the rebounding curse. He stored his inert wand in his pocket and moved into the shadows so he could walk the streets partially concealed by their familiar embrace.

He hadn’t gone far when he recognized a dozen flaws in his plan. He would show up at his past self’s secret residence, with no magic to key the wards or prove his identity—nothing but a vaguely familiar face and his wand as evidence? He could as easily be flagged as a hostile invader and incinerated by the barriers, and if he _was_ presented to his past self, what could he say for himself? Ask them to call Bellatrix and depend on the girl making a convincing case?

The imagined scene made his mouth taste sour. Too many dangerous potential outcomes. He needed his magic. Which, presumably, had been stolen from him in 1943, and remained there. Unless it was simply bound away from him. He’d heard rumors that you could essentially render someone a Squib, but he had never taken the time to verify it. There were simpler and more direct means of torture which were sufficiently effective.

A part of him wanted to return directly to the 40s and wring Alaned Malfoy’s neck immediately, as though he could reclaim his magic when he took that fool’s life. 

It _was_ possible that Alaned would be waiting there to spring some sort of trap which Voldemort, now without his power, wouldn’t be equipped to escape.

But Voldemort saw no immediate alternative. And he was painfully restless without his magic in his veins where it belonged. So, impulsively, he turned the Time-Turner back to the date from which he had departed.

Nothing happened. He inspected it closely in the dim light of the street lamps, and eventually found the reason why. On one side of the device was a tiny embedded hourglass, ignorant of gravity and obedient instead to its time-keeping purpose no matter how Voldemort turned it end over end. It shifted glittering golden sand from one end to the other. It had barely passed any of its volume from the full end to the other one. Voldemort watched for several tense minutes until he could calculate a reasonable estimate of how slowly it was refilling.

It would be at least three days before it ran out.

Voldemort felt his pocket and fingered the bulge of galleons he’d sewn into the lining for the journey. There were a few methods of restoring himself he could still try. 

**Chapter 13.2**

**Deprived of his great strength, man must depend on his great wit; or, Voldemort goes shopping.**

When Tom was a child he spent his summers, as soon as he was old enough, outside the orphanage’s gates from the moment they were opened until they closed just before supper. Then he would sit near an open window until all the other children were asleep. Only then would he manage to sleep a few fitful hours, restless as a caged animal, until the sun rose and he could eat tasteless porridge and be off again.

After his first year at Hogwarts, Tom studied the streets of London with a new eye. Where he had overlooked the occasional oddly-dressed beggar or oblong bulge in a pocket, the overcoat that was oddly embroidered and looked more like a robe, he now watched with particular care. Once someone knew the look and feel of the wizarding world, it was easy to see it bleeding into the Muggle one.

He followed, he watched, he listened. And he learned there was much more magic in London than simply what could be found in and around Diagon Alley.

He had emboldened this world during his rise; strengthened the frayed fabric of witches and wizards who straddled the Muggle realm to better avoid the eye of the Ministry, and he knew where one had to look in order to find magical wares that wouldn’t call upon one to draw their wand. Still, it had been years since he’d had to travel to them by non-magical means.

He walked through the city as the night deepened, the feeling of being exposed hot on the back of his neck. He’d felt this way as a child, until the first Horcrux was made. No matter how much stronger he was than everyone else, he couldn’t stop himself from thumbing through the mental catalogue he’d built of ways that great wizards and witches had died before him. He’d studied their biographies and poured over the history books for every mention, eager to find someone in whose image he should craft himself. But the deaths were always the worst kind: unavoidable accidents, or a single lapse in judgment. Betrayals, of course, but Voldemort had never found himself tempted by trust. What he feared instead was happenstance; coincidence; the Muggles’ guns and bombs, certainly, but also the mundane: a falling brick, a train accident, a puddle made lethal by a bit of rogue electricity.

He had the Horcruxes, but they didn’t reassure him as they once had, now that he understood how perilous it was to be _between_ bodies. How he had to rely on others as he detested doing. And without his magic...it was the worst torment, one he had never borne. Even as a small child, as close to helpless as he’d ever been, his magic had cloaked him in its defense; lashing out to protect him; coiling close to keep him warm when other children shivered on the coldest winter nights.

It wasn’t helpful that the place he needed to go was in one of the least secure of the Muggles’ various little neighborhoods. He had an absent fascination with the way they grouped and moved, as species of fish might cluster in a reef, nudging against one another’s habitats and either devouring one another or darting back into their various territories upon contact. It was a symptom, he supposed, of being limited to three dimensions of continuous space, of having to establish paths from one destination to the next. It led to curious obsessions among the Muggles, for example, how helpless they were when deprived of their maps. Whereas magical cultures grew under entirely different natural laws, and physical space was rarely a constraint. 

Voldemort needed no map to navigate London, changed though it was. He had walked it as a boy. There was no way to Apparate without triggering the trace. And though those days were years behind him, and the city much changed, he had been able to orient himself as a Muggle would in the various places along its myriad streets and boltholes throughout his life, imagining everything as it could be reached on foot from the orphanage.

He checked the Time-Turner, but distressingly, it seemed unchanged even since his last look. He was procrastinating, here on the right side of King’s Cross, but he steeled himself and walked on, the last streetlamp casting a swiftly-fading circle of light and beyond it, the darkness of the railway lands studded only with the firelight of the Muggle homeless.

Voldemort drew plenty of less-than-welcoming stares as he passed among the dirty vagrants that populated this place at night. The painted ones didn’t solicit him and the ones that were likely lethally armed didn’t obstruct him, so he counted the visit a success. He had forgotten the smell here. It made him feel young. As a boy it had been unusual for Muggles to clean themselves more than once a week, unless they were rich. Then, there were still places where there was faulty plumbing or none at all, and puddles of sewage and the drying urine of livestock weren’t an uncommon sight. By this time, a more sanitized version of humanity was parading in the brightly-lit streets, but their baser nature was better on display in this decaying corner of the city.

Where an abandoned warehouse stood with its doors thrown open, interior yawning black as the entrance to a cavern, Voldemort stepped out of a trickle of men with the feverish expressions of drug addicts. They went on, coasting toward the darkness as moths would toward light, and Voldemort stepped gingerly down a jagged little embankment where a fetid stream lay between a twist of broken track, glossy with oil.

The little man huddled beneath a canvas tarp and wearing a subtly peaked hat might have been just another pathetic Muggle, waiting to starve or freeze or overdose in this foul acreage, but he wasn’t.

“I need two half-moon runestones and a Dawn Ritual Infusion Potion,” he said without preamble. It was best to behave as boldly as possible, lest the vendor be tempted to test his magical identity in any way. “I need it within the hour, and I can cover the cost of the time constraint by doubling your price. Sixty galleons, that would make it, yes?”

The wrinkled little wizard peered out from under the filth-blackened bill of his hat and looked Voldemort over from the toe of his boots to the ends of his hair. “Don’t know who told you our prices, but they were mistaken. That order would be sixty galleons regular, so to expedite we’ll need one-twenty.”

Voldemort seethed, thinking with raw nerves that were things in their natural order, his magic would have wrapped tightly around the miscreant’s throat without Voldemort consciously summoning it. It always knew what he wanted a moment before he did. But he satisfied himself with the promise that this man would be dead before Voldemort returned to 1996, or Voldemort would find him and ensure that he died miserably. Through gritted teeth he said, “One hundred galleons, then,” because it would be transparent to fold so easily to an outrageous price. And, the balance of the Galleons in his possession was only one hundred and fifty. He could hardly spend so much of his means in one stop.

“Give me twenty minutes,” the wizard said, peering left, then right, then Disapparating with an impressively soft crack. He chose his moment just as a freight train came past, a dozen yards away but still near enough that Voldemort’s teeth felt like they were rattling. He stared at the stagnant water and watched the force throw ripples through its surface, swirling in a thousand dark neon rainbows.

The minutes were impossible to chart without _Tempus_ or keeping a countdown himself, but Voldemort did not know how to pace his tally. His heart felt like the least reliable of metronomes, his pulse racing, then slowing, then coming fast again. He continued to stare at the poisoned water, imagining the dry earth leeching it in all its toxicity down deep into the soil, and past to the tilting tectonic plates, deeper still to the molten core where, in legend, a man traveled to imbue his blood with magic, making himself the first of wizardkind.

It seemed like an eternity, and also only a moment, before the wizard’s return. He was holding a paper bag with the top folded over under his arm, his wand in hand. He held out the opposite hand with an open palm and an expectant look.

Voldemort paused thoughtfully, then paid and snatched the sack in almost the same moment. The wizard startled and his wand sparked, but nothing made contact. Still, he was scowling as he took a step back toward his tarp, just as a cold, weak rain began. Voldemort lifted the hood of his cloak, opened the sack, and took inventory.

“”S’all there,” muttered the wizard. “Now, go on. You’ve lingered long enough.” 

“Yes, everything does seem to be in order,” Voldemort said warmly, and looked up with a small, polite smile. “I have been a patron of McKruzel’s, but I see I have underestimated their competitors.”

The wizard seemed surprised, but he was hardly equipped to resist Voldemort’s effort at charm, and he huffed a laugh and preened, smoothing the lapels of his filthy shirt with fingers turned faintly blue from handling toxic Potions. “Bloody overrated, McKruzel’s,” he scoffed, then smiled at Voldemort with shy interest. “We don’t usually see none so...well-groomed.”

Voldemort supposed that was true. He had generally sent henchmen to run errands here, though it certainly wasn’t always that way. “I’d like to recommend you, if I may, but I’m not sure which of the partners you are…?”

“Dougal,” said the wizard without hesitation. What a fool. Voldemort inclined his head, letting his smile grow into something sharper and more sincere. The idiot beamed back. Knowing his name would make it easier for Voldemort to look him up one day when he had time to spare.

Voldemort retraced his steps, head down, clutching the bag, which he’d tucked deep in his cloak pocket.

**Chapter 13.3**

**What Dreams May Come to He of Anguished Heart and Strained Mind; or, Voldemort gets a hug.**

He went into the first shuttered underground station he saw, chose a dark corner, and waited for morning. He leaned the side of his head against the cold concrete and brick and closed his eyes, though the experience inside his mind was little changed. The world was seamless darkness either way. The thoughts that had been overwhelmed by agitation over his magic loomed up with renewed strength, as though they had been waiting for their opportunity.

Harry Potter. _He_ had done this to Voldemort. Cursed him with this frailty that made his anger more sudden than ever, his fear unbearably vivid, his body humming even now with the overpowering desire to gather Harry to his chest and hold him tightly. Crush his bones, or cradle him gently as though he was made of glass; claw open his skin, or caress him with his fingertips; tear out his hair, or stroke it gently; bite him or kiss him; fuck him or roll over for him.

Voldemort was startled from his reverie by that last thought. It didn’t matter; the boy would be gone. He hadn’t a lifelong relationship to consider, now. He could have done it before he left, knowing it would ruin the boy but not caring. Held him down, half-smothered in the pillows, and…

“Are you awake?” breathed a voice in his ear.

Voldemort sank back into the pillows—pillows?—and opened his eyes to—sunlight. And...Harry?

Sunlight and Harry. Harry with his head cocked, peering into Voldemort’s face. Voldemort knew him in an instant, though the face was changed, beautifully marked by age. He had crow’s feet, one heavy line across his brow, a strong jaw covered in a day’s growth. As a boy, Tom Riddle had a weakness for older men, and it seemed Voldemort hadn’t grown as immune as he believed. Harry’s hair was still dark, but peppered at the temples with silver. His arm was sun-bronzed, warm and strong around Voldemort’s waist. Voldemort looked down at their intertwined bodies, tangled in snowy white sheets, and saw that Harry, though still petite, had everywhere lost his boyishness. He had thick dark hair between his legs that rasped against Voldemort’s more sparsely furred thigh as he rubbed himself, hot and hard, slowly and insistently against him.

A dream, Voldemort supposed, though it surprised him to think he had fallen asleep in the station. Not ideal, though unlikely to cause him harm; men slept unmolested in the cold shadows all the time. Anyway, he’d never been able to wake himself from the most terrible nightmare nor the sweetest dream, so he resolved to enjoy it.

He heard Harry hiss as he lurched up and rolled over him, grinding with ruthless pressure against Harry’s cock where it stood trapped between them, and when Harry went pliant beneath him, Voldemort put a knee in his stomach and his hands around his throat.

Harry’s eyes went immediately bright with anticipation, and Voldemort’s stomach lurched. But he didn’t want to fuck him, he wanted—

He wanted to fuck him, and then he would strangle him in earnest. Now he only held too tightly for Harry to breathe properly, and Harry took it beautifully, as though this was a game they’d played before. It was a dream; Harry was fifty at least; in the dreamscape, Voldemort thought dizzily, they _had_ played before. He could imagine it all, as clear as real memory, years spent cautiously circling one another before they fell into a pattern of coming together vicious and turbulent, then separating to seethe before it began all over again.

Until the separations were sparse and brief, until the viciousness was matched by reverence. Voldemort felt like he had been dropped into an entire, detailed universe of make-believe; it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. 

It was, he thought numbly, not a dream.

He released Harry and scrambled backward on his haunches until his hands gripped the end of the mattress at the foot of the bed, gasping. Harry slowly sat up, a hand on his neck, gaze watchful.

“It’s _you_ , isn’t it?” he asked.

Voldemort blinked at him. Harry jerked the sheets up over his hips, as if suddenly realizing he was in bed with a stranger rather than a lover, but the pervasive _softness_ remained in his expression. No one had ever looked at Voldemort that way. It made him want to murder Harry, and with a low growl he curled his fingers into his fists until his short nails bit hard into his palms, hard enough to break the skin.

“It _is_ ,” Harry murmured, his brow furrowing, explaining that deep wrinkle. He drew his knees slowly up to his chest, as though he was in the presence of a startled predator, and eased his left arm around his left knee. Then he pressed the back of his right hand against his mouth. He was absurdly lovely, as though every movement was designed to entrance Voldemort. He forgot his rage in blank-minded lust, looking at the crux of Harry’s thighs where his balls were drawn tight by tension, below his softening cock; and the slope of his shoulder, deceptively narrow but elegant with rounded muscle; and the way his tousled hair parted around his delicate ears.

Voldemort made an involuntary, low sound of distress, and Harry’s expression cleared. He moved forward before Voldemort could react, the economical grace of an athlete, so he was clasping Voldemort’s arm and cupping the back of his neck before Voldemort realized he had moved.

“It’ll be okay,” Harry murmured, pressing his forehead to Voldemort’s. This close, Voldemort couldn’t make out any of the details of his face, except the bright green irises, the girlishly thick, sooty eyelashes. Harry’s breath, slightly stale from sleep, tickled his upper lip. “You’re going to be okay.”

There was a terrible sound of metal-on-metal, echoing painfully off the boundaries of Voldemort’s skull, and then he was _re-opening_ his eyes—something that shouldn’t be possible and which made his head throb in protest—and staring through the dimness of early dawn at a train arriving in the station where he’d fallen asleep in 1981.

**Chapter 13.4**

**A Flawed Ritual and an Unexpected Murder; or, Voldemort loses his temper.**

It was too late for the Potion; it had to be administered precisely at sunrise. On the off-chance it didn’t work, anyway, Voldemort struck off to the location of his last resort: the deep woods where Hilda’s clearing should still lie, considering he’d visited her on October 28th, 1981 and she’d been very alive.

He took the above-ground train that ran on a noisy track twice a day. It led to the little village where the residents’ ancestors had long hunted Hilda, the strange woman who lived alone in the densest part of their forest and must, therefore, be a witch. Of course, they weren’t wrong, but the principle of the matter still chafed. Voldemort knew for a fact Hilda had never caused a Muggle harm. It was one of the Woodswomen’s laws, after all, to take few victims and never those un-equally matched. Anyone with little or no magic was effectively off-limits.

It had been a long walk then, and still was now. Particularly when one couldn’t use magic to empower one’s mind against the Woodswoman’s version of wards, a disconcerting magic that was a powerful cousin to Obliviate. The closer he got to the clearing, the more fervently he was sure whatever he sought must be in the opposite direction. His resolve kept him from turning back, but he entirely lost track of time and direction.

He wandered until he was ill. Until he was so far out of his head that when he did stumble into the clearing and saw Hilda, holding a bundle of bones close as an infant, her mismatched eyes wide, he didn’t recognize her for several drawn-out moments.

“Tom,” she said, breaking the silence. His knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. She was crooking a finger at him, and the pillow of her spell pressed against him from all slides and held him a centimeter from the forest floor.

“Well, _this_ I didn’t expect,” she said.

He came to his senses enough to struggle against her magic, and she obliged him by dissipating it. He stumbled a bit, but held his feet, and then swallowed and looked around the clearing while he gathered his wits.

“So soon,” Hilda said in a soft voice, shaking the bone curtain out of the crook of her arm and into her hands so she could look down at it. Voldemort couldn’t bring himself to wait for her to finish whatever insane little rambling she’d begun.

“You must restore my power to me. It was stolen, or bound. I c-cannot...kill...” he forgot what he had meant to say. 

Her eyes had narrowed dangerously, her mouth opening in a broad grin. He’d never seen her smile this way; her protruding front tooth was just one in a crooked mouthful, all yellow and slightly too long. Perhaps he was still discomfited by his disoriented wandering, thirsty and half-starved, but she horrified him as never before.

“You cannot kill without your magic,” she murmured thoughtfully. “It is wrong, the fire, though just once in a millennium, they say.”

“For once,” Voldemort breathed, bending to brace himself against his knees, glaring up at her through his sweat-tangled hair. “For _once,_ speak clearly, you mad _bitch_.”

Her smile reappeared, and her eyes shone with a sort of dazed bliss. “All those years ago, I foresaw in the flames that you would kill me, Tom Riddle. But I thought I could shape you. Ingratiate you. And I wove your hair, too, in the bone curtain.” She held it up reverently between them. “It appears I was successful.” She lowered her chin to look at him slyly. “Though not in the way I thought, but I have never shunned luck.”

“ _You_?” Voldemort scoffed, rising back to his feet with his lip curled in disgust. 

She seemed confused. “I?”

“ _You_ did this to _me_?” He thought with horror of going into her lake, never thinking she might leave some sort of foul tether in the body her magic crafted there. But it shouldn’t be possible; she wasn’t strong enough, surely, to keep Voldemort from anything he wanted.

“I did nothing,” she said imperiously. “ _You_ split your soul. _You_ were the one who believed you could go on, uninhibited, with those pieces of yourself thrown about through time. _You_ were the fool.”

“Fool?” He snarled. “Is that so?” His thoughts pivoted back to her earlier fountain of nonsense, and something cool and self-satisfied blossomed in his chest. “And if I wanted to kill you now, I would do it with my bare hands.”

She held the bone curtain tightly, her grin fading. Her pulse was racing in her throat: Voldemort saw it there, fast as a field mouse’s, and absurdly thought he could _smell_ it, also; he had the vivid, deeply satisfying thought he could open her throat and drink from her. But it could only be a hallucination brought on by his extreme thirst.

Still, he was moving nearer, watching her neck, hearing her breath hitch.

“The clearing will not allow it,” she muttered. “The hair of an outsider marks him my enemy, it will not—“

“Am I an outsider?” Voldemort wondered aloud. He could see she was trying to step away from him—or maybe to to turn and run?—but her feet stayed planted. “I who have slept here, eaten here, made magic here? I, who your elf prefers?”

Finally, she seemed to wrench her planted feet loose beneath her, but only to stumble and fall hard on her backside. From there she stared up at Voldemort, craning her neck to watch him as he slowly circled her, his head spinning at the possibilities.

“Tom,” she murmured. “When you had no one, I fed you, taught you--”

“Bled me,” Voldemort added. “All of our debts are settled now, Woodswoman. Or they shall be.” He was in front of her again, and he slowly kneeled, delighting in how she tried to scramble away, but he caught her around the neck with one hand and the arm with the other, and pulled her close even as she pounded ineffectually at him with her unhindered hand and struggled to thrash her legs against his.

The day they’d met, he hadn’t been strong enough to keep her from plunging him into the lake. But the body she had made him was much stronger than the one which had belonged to that child, and though he suffered the torrent of bruising blows from her flailing limbs, she couldn’t keep him from pinning her lower body under his and putting his hands around her throat. 

She made a small sound, and Voldemort lifted his eyes to her face. She smelled foul. Her eyes were bloodshot, yellow where they should be white. The red eye blazed with indignant hate and the brown eye was weeping freely, painting the craggy cheeks beneath into glossy wet ravines.

****

Voldemort put her in the hut. He couldn’t take the Potion with a fresh corpse lying in the soil. Unthinking, he laid her in her bed, and wandered back out into the predawn.

In the first version of events, his bodiless past self would arrive at Hilda’s winter cottage in Albania, expecting her to craft a body for him as she had agreed. Voldemort recalled the feeling he’d had, circling the Woodswoman’s corpse, with all his other supporters in the heat of war on a continent he was too weakened to reach. Now, he supposed that past self would find only an empty cottage.

Voldemort sat on the ground in the clearing to remove his boots and socks. He still needed food and water, but his body appeared to have resigned itself to deprivation. The insistent demands from minutes before had gone. He felt only clean, purged by the dryness and emptiness.

He looked up. The dense clouds brightened as the sun reached a horizon well below the treetops, unseen from the clearing. Voldemort quickly bent over to clear the earth until his fingertips were damp from the cool soil a few inches beneath. In these depressions he laid the runes, and then he stood and stepped over them, so they were smooth and snug against the arches of each of his feet. 

Then, before he change his mind, Voldemort hastily uncorked the Potion and swallowed it.

Inside the hut where he’d left it lying over its mistress, the bone curtain began to rattle.

The Potion spread through him like ice in his veins, and he imagined the last man he had killed: the Unspeakable on the day he arrived in 1943. The life he would have lived, decades or just hours, had Voldemort not sunk his hands into the tapestry of his life and yanked it from the loom.

The heady power surged through him, but his body, without its magic, almost capitulated to the Potion’s powerful without regard for the anchoring runes. Voldemort almost lost his footing, and for a terrible moment his arms windmilled and he saw it—death, or some non-permanent version of it, grinning into his face—but then he regained his balance, and he fought the searing pain and vertigo and held his stance.

The sun’s first direct rays came over the trees and lanced through the clearing. Voldemort smelled it before he felt it: his flesh burning, an odor he would never grow accustomed to, a stunning agony. But he didn’t stumble.

Voldemort had never been interested in pain; it held no fascination for him. He was willing to be steered by the basic, animal aversion to what could hurt and the lure of what felt pleasant. But this ritual, simple in its format and depending almost entirely on intent—it carried meaning so tremendous the pain was transformed. It was rebirth; a new origin; facing a thousand deaths and limitless lifetimes all at once to earn immortality.

The ritual was relatively well-known, though few had the strength to face it. The barrier was the willingness to stay on one’s feet while the outer two layers of skin were burned away by the sunrise then regrown by the interaction of the runes and damp soil. With a pint of blood in one’s belly, the end result was vampirism; and without, the end result was regeneration. 

Voldemort was a magical creature; if the ritual remade him, it should restore his magic as well.

The secret of this ritual that few, if any, knew: if one killed and ate a live animal while the sun debrided him, he would gasp and heave loose a shard of his soul. It would be cast from his body, bright and ephemeral as starlight, visible only a moment or two before it leapt into the designated object and was evermore invisible once again. A Horcrux.

But there was no animal, no distraction; it was both easier and more difficult to bear the pain without that added challenge. Somehow, nonsensically, it was Harry he thought of. The dream of him the night before, strong and willing, the close-up vibrancy of his eyes. The reality of him as he had been in 1943, younger and coltish, tense and hot against Voldemort’s chest. The bathroom—his desperate cries and humiliated tears, his _obedience_ …

It had been over for a while before Voldemort realized the pain was gone. He was whole; his clothing tattered by the ritual—careless, he should have removed it, but he was anxious he’d miss the sunrise—

And his magic was still absent.

He lurched forward to his knees and breathed heavily, raggedly. The bone curtain was silent. In fact, the entire world seemed so still and quiet that it startled Voldemort as no sound might have.

Something glinted gold in his blurry field of vision: the Time-Turner. It had fallen onto the ground, shed from the burnt-out pocket of his robes. Now it lay face down on the sparse grass, revealing the hourglass, which had finally run its course.

Voldemort stared at the device, recalling how, realizing his magic was gone, he had tried to use it immediately when he arrived in this time. But now, he hesitated.

The smell of fresh blood filled his nostrils, and Voldemort raised his head to see the elf, its muzzle wet and red, wrapping half a rabbit in a bit of cloth. It tossed the bundle into a soiled, striped cloth sack, and proceeded to put the runestones ringing the fire in as well.

It was November 1, Voldemort thought, and if she were still alive Hilda and the elf would be decamping to their winter location in Albania. Where he, in his bodiless flight from Godric’s Hollow, would eventually arrive and find her dead.

He tried to recall that scene, but couldn’t. He remembered the elf, bloodstained and nibbling at her. Were there other wounds? Had her throat been necklaced with the dark bruises of strangulation?

_I foresaw in the flames that you would kill me._

The elf, having packed up the camp into the bag, which appeared no heavier nor more full than when it had began, ambled carelessly past Voldemort into the cottage, and a few moments later there was a crack. Voldemort rose slowly to his feet and walked into the cottage himself, noting that the Potions cabinet stood empty, the tower of dishes and tools was gone, and Hilda’s body no longer lay on the cot where he had placed it.

The elf, in its animal mind, either hadn’t noticed its mistress was dead, or hadn’t realized it had any less responsibility to obey her in death as in life. Voldemort wondered, with a vague sort of interest, whether the elf would bring back her rotting hide on April 1 to this, the primary residence. Would the magic of the clearing fail without her? Or would this place, with its boundary keyed to admit someone seeking entrance only upon Hilda’s approval, remain locked away from all but the elf for centuries? Would the elf one day be Apparating back and forth with nothing left to side-along but a pile of bleached-white bones?

It wasn’t worthy of his curiosity, Voldemort supposed.

He left the cottage with more haste than he’d entered it, feeling suddenly cold and closed-in within its walls. Back in the clearing, he picked up the Time-Turner, turned it over twice in his hand, and then input the date. Whatever might await him in 1943, it could hardly be less welcoming than what was left in 1981.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! We adore your feedback. <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to mith, and this time cybrid too, for the incredibly helpful beta!

**Chapter 14.1**

**Circumstances Which Are Most Obvious in Hindsight; or, Voldemort figures a few things out.**

Voldemort arrived in 1943, and before he could experience any anxiety over it, he tested his magic. The _Reducto_ left a crater in the center of the street, and Voldemort Apparated away while the Muggles were still shouting.

At the Hogwarts perimeter he flew over the dome of wards, because he could. He needed to find Harry, but he wasn’t sure what he would do to the next person he saw, so he basked in the calm starlight, buffeted by the cool winds, until he could organize his thoughts into the cool placidity of active Occlumency.

 _Clear your mind_ , he’d taught Severus Snape—or would, forty plus years in the future. Severus possessed a powerful anger that could lure him into decisions based on passion rather than reason. Voldemort had learned in his young adulthood that losing one’s temper could make one impulsive, and magic, as ever, offered a solution.

When he descended and stepped through the gates, he thought he might be able to keep Andrews alive long enough to properly interrogate him. He wasn’t Polyjuiced, so he Disillusioned himself and moved quickly. Fortunately, he only saw the caretaker, who wasn’t powerful enough to realize anything was amiss.

Voldemort warded the door behind him, crossed to the chamber where Andrews’ trunk sat, and stood over it with his fists clenched.

He realized he could smell Harry in the room. It was faint, almost unidentifiable, but it was not the way things smelled when Voldemort kept private rooms, as he had all his life since Hogwarts. He thought of Harry, walking around with Andrews to test all the boundaries in the room, and Harry, half-curled in on himself in the bed, as though protecting himself.

Voldemort opened the trunk.

The Auror looked up cautiously from his chair, a book open in his lap.

“Realized he was missing, then?” he asked grimly. 

Voldemort silenced him with an unnamed curse. He’d learned it from a wizard who masqueraded as a Muggle and made a small fortune horrifying audiences by jerking his assistant about like a puppet without strings.

Voldemort closed a fist and lifted his arm and Andrews rose from the trunk. He was clawing at the invisible hand around his neck, eyes wide and trained on Voldemort’s. When Voldemort terminated the Curse, Andrews fell gasping to the floor, coughing violently. Voldemort had, perhaps, grasped him more tightly than he intended.

“What did you tell him?”

Andrews tumbled onto his side, rolled over and blinked up at Voldemort with an enraged stare, still holding his throat, and said nothing. Voldemort lifted his wand and grudgingly cast a spell to repair his damaged trachea.

When he was breathing properly, Andrews said, voice still strangled, “I sent him to Dumbledore.”

Voldemort’s Occlumency shields shuddered at the barrage of internal forces, and he felt the flavor of the killing curse on his tongue. Perhaps it was _Crucio_ ; they carried a similar satisfaction.

“I don’t die here,” Andrews said. Voldemort stared at him, incredulous.

“I have no use for blind optimists,” he assured the Auror, but he couldn’t quite form the intent for _Avada Kedavra_ , and with a bubbling rage he understood why.

Voldemort could not kill Andrews; after all, one day he would see him in battle. He recalled it very well; it hadn’t taken a fire to show him. _That which you manifest is before you,_ indeed.

“How do you know?” he growled. He didn’t mean the question literally, but at the careful blank stare he saw in return, a different sort of surprise filled him. “How do you _know_?” he repeated, with completely different emphasis, and Andrews cleared his abused throat.

“Alaned Malfoy isn’t the only one who has seen his small part of the tapestry,” he said quietly.

Old memories rose to the surface in Voldemort’s mind. He did remember the Auror Andrews, but in hindsight, it hadn’t only been his familiarity as the man who had taught him DADA which made him stand out in the battle. In fact, Andrews was by then so aged, so changed, that Voldemort wouldn’t have known him at all if Andrews hadn’t called out.

 _You_! He’d bellowed, in the same voice he had used to correct a student’s dueling stance from the other side of a room crowded and noisy with children practicing. Voldemort had jerked around as though struck, feeling that he’d catapulted through time and was seventeen again.

And there was Andrews, a white-haired old man by then, eyes wide and furious. He blocked Voldemort’s first curse with a familiar flourish. _You never quite mastered that, did you?_

“Don’t look so smug, Andrews,” he said now, but absently. Andrews didn’t look smug, truly, only unconcerned. But that was close enough. Voldemort was still seething in a way he knew could only be soothed by someone kneeling, begging, or watching him with the fevered gaze of a devotee. “If you can’t die, I suppose that means I’ll have to leave you in this trunk when I take my leave of this time.”

“Why?” 

Voldemort watched Andrews more closely. With his full attention, he could observe the sweat pebbling the bridge of his nose, the slight dilation of his pupils, how his nostrils flared. He was not as at ease as he pretended, which drained a bit of the strain from Voldemort.

“You mean to convince me,” he murmured, “that should I release you, you would not interfere with my progress in the future?”

He didn’t mention his former self, of course. Other than a resemblance, which he could be said to bear to any number of the handsomest young wizards anyway, there was no reason Andrews would ever know that Tom Riddle would become Lord Voldemort.

“You will release me,” Andrews said, licking his lips. “I know that much, but no more. And I _am_ an Unspeakable, but my role with Time plays out when I walk into the classroom for the first time, and no one realizes I was gone.”

“Why would I let you go?” Voldemort insisted.

Andrews pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, as though annoyed. Voldemort cursed his feet and hands to swell and blister, and Andrews, clutching his knees, panted and stared at the splitting skin.

“Because you _must_ ,” he cried, and Voldemort growled and sustained the curse so that a boil rose bubble-like on the back of Andrews’ right hand, large as the end of his thumb and glossy with pus.

A scream tore out of Andrews and he lifted his booted feet from the floor in agony. Voldemort terminated the spell. His hands returned to a normal shape but remained angry and red. Andrews held them away from him, whimpering, as though afraid to touch.

“There is nothing I _must_ do,” Voldemort said coldly.

Andrews took a long moment to answer, having finally learned to watch his mouth. “None of us can do what would alter us as we are. Not ourselves, nor someone we’ve known. _That which you manifest is before you_.”

Voldemort’s gaze snapped to him and Andrews nodded fervently. “The book. I know you’ve read it. None of them are correct, but there are bits of truth in some of the theories. And that is the truth of time.”

“If that is true, what use is there for a department such as yours? Why monitor and interfere, if your ‘tapestry’ is inevitable?”

“Minor deviations can occur. Loose threads.” Andrews swallowed. “Even if it causes a catastrophe, time finds its way, with or without us.”

Fate, to such a fixed degree. What a foul thought. 

“Where is Harry?”

“I don’t know.”

Voldemort’s wand twitched and Andrews hastily wet his lips. “You should be able to find him. After all, you know the history of this war quite well, don’t you?”

Voldemort considered Andrews again, bent over and slowly lowering his hands, now realizing they weren’t at risk of sticking to anything. “I saw the headlines. But they were wrong. The battle wasn’t there. Grindelwald had the bodies moved as a diversion. He has made the pretense of forming a frontline, but the war is everywhere. Those Aurors were killed one at a time outside their homes—one of them was murdered in his bed.”

Andrews nodded slowly, his expression shifting, so he looked at Voldemort with a passive mask. Under it, his eyes betrayed how he seethed.

Voldemort sighed. “It isn’t as though _I_ killed them, Professor Andrews. You needn’t look at me that way.”

“But you admire him.”

“I learned something of war from him,” Voldemort allowed. “From his victories, and his failures. How would the boy know where to go? What did you tell him?”

“If you don’t believe me, I’ll let you Legimilimize me,” Andrews said, looking at Voldemort’s wand with distaste.

Voldemort laughed. “ _Let_ me?”

“I won’t resist you,” Andrews amended hastily, and met Voldemort’s eye.

—————

When the Auror—Unspeakable—was back in his box, Voldemort paced in his office and considered his options.

But then there was a sudden surge of energy, as though his magic had doubled, his every cell and sense overcharged, and, bafflingly, the experience carried with it a very deliberate sense of _direction_ , which Voldemort followed.

He flew from the castle this time, from an open window. It took energy, and it had its dangers, but it was quick. He watched the wards part, a film of silver, faintly glittering. They recognized him as staff, and released him from the grounds with a hiss of visible dissipating energy almost like steam. 

His magic had stayed in 1943 with Harry, it would seem, but his absence must have exacted some other price. Though Voldemort hadn’t known a Horcrux could cry out for help, that seemed to be exactly what was happening now. 

**Chapter 14.2**

**The Complex Emotional Response to Abrupt and Intimate Knowledge of One’s Enemy; or, Harry is deeply confused.**

Harry drifted in and out of a dream. It was intense but unclear. He thought he saw his mother, holding him in her lap and pointing to a starry sky. Death-Eaters in their eerie masks, peering up as though he stood above them.

The silence of the night sky at high altitude. Bitingly cold, soaring like a bird, so different than the straddled-rocket sensation of crouching over a broom.

The moon was almost out of sight, behind a thick net of clouds, and he couldn’t make out a single star. Harry felt like he was staring out from the center of a marble; the world below him and the sky above felt like two halves of a sphere.

The clearest moment was the sight of his parents through a wide window alive with warm light, framed by the dark outdoors. Harry had imagined himself with his parents before, but never like this, in such complete detail, and looking from the outside in.

It was only a dream; he knew that. A nightmare while his time-tossed mind was pulled apart as Voldemort changed history to erase him. But it felt _right_ , too. He heard his mother’s laugh and it lit up in his heart with the force of an old, precious memory.

James was tossing him in the air. Lily shrieked when he let Harry fly from his hands on the last throw and coast on a Levitation Charm twice around the kitchen, giggling like mad.

He thought he might remember something like that. Maybe his subconscious had found the deeply-buried ingredients of the scene, because Harry saw everything in a flash not through the window but from his own perspective inside the house, bumping gently against the ceiling, arms and legs windmilling, the upturned faces beaming at him with unmistakable love.

Then more shifting scenes, unfamiliar faces, and the strong sense of fading. It was like he imagined death, and should have made him panic, if he hadn’t been too distanced from his emotions to experience anything but vague curiosity.

And then everything was quiet and dark, and there was no room or energy for Harry to think anything at all.

The first sign that Harry still existed was a low and trembling voice, speaking his name.

“Harry.”

He still had a body. He had cramped legs, numb toes, tingling fingertips. He had an empty stomach that wrenched in silent demand. He had a throat which felt as dry and closed as a roll of parchment. 

But something had changed within him, too. His time between waking and dreaming, life and death, had united him with Voldemort somehow. He had stayed lodged deeply in Voldemort’s magic even after Voldemort had gone through time. And while he was there, he had seen a hundred secrets and buried truths.

 _Harry_.

...Harry was a Horcrux.

When he was six, Tom Riddle fell and badly cut his leg on a stray piece of glass. The bleeding was so serious it made him faint, and then there was a burning infection. A doctor had stood over him with a perfectly neutral expression. _The leg may have to be removed_ , he had said, frowning, as he poked and prodded the painfully reddened flesh.

...a Horcrux was some kind of container for a scrap of soul.

 _Better he die_ , had said one of the orphanage nurses. _A cripple can’t keep himself_. The doctor had nodded thoughtfully. _Then we will see how it works out_.

...a step toward immortality.

The leg healed and the flesh knit. _A miracle if he doesn’t have at least a bad limp_ , the doctor had said when he examined it again. But Tom Riddle didn’t limp. The leg didn’t bother him at all. But the long scar, which by all rights should have disappeared when he was remade, remained. 

...Voldemort had tried to kill him, _again,_ back in 1981. He’d failed, but not for lack of trying.

It was the first thing he noticed when Wormtail built that first, weak vessel. He had reached down with his small, oddly sensitive hand, and found his malformed leg bore a miniaturized version of that twisting scar, which seemed to hook on one end, where the shard of glass had lodged deeply and had to be cut out. He had the scar when he came out of the cauldron, and he had it now, a curious relic of his first and final brush with mortality.

 _Harry_.

Harry opened his eyes. Voldemort was holding Harry’s upper body in his lap. Harry’s head was cradled in his elbow, and with his other hand he was stroking Harry’s face. He looked intensely relieved when Harry’s eyes met his, and then, instantly, he looked angry.

“You _ran_ ,” he snarled, but he continued to touch Harry’s face very gently, as though he couldn’t help himself.

“You tried to kill me,” Harry reminded him. He’d expected his voice to sound strained, or frightened, but it sounded even and measured in his ears, if soft. “Again.”

Voldemort’s jaw steeled. It made him look impossibly handsome, his lower lip jutting out slightly into what would be a pout on anyone else.

“I…”

“You couldn’t do it,” Harry said. “I think I was with you, in a way.” As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. The sight of his one-year-old self and his parents had seemed real because it wasn't contained in Harry’s imagination, but Voldemort’s memory. His eyes filled with tears and he lifted an unsteady hand to dash them away, but Voldemort was already catching them with a sweep of his thumb. 

“Hmm,” said Voldemort. “I would have, had I been able. It seems that, contrary to my original belief, the time loop we occupy is stable.”

Harry couldn’t bring himself to be offended, or afraid. It was the bond, its singing pleasure at Voldemort’s touch. And it was the Horcrux relationship, for a separate and altogether horrifying reason. Voldemort wouldn’t hurt him. Voldemort saw, and cherished, Harry as he only could someone he saw as his counterpart, in whom he literally saw himself.

In a twisted way, Harry’s heart leapt at the thought. _Belonging_. _Beloved_. He’d never wanted anything else; apparently the taste he’d had in his first year of life set him up to long for it forever.

Somewhere in the future Remus and Sirius were still alive. Ron and Hermione loved him, he knew, but he could see that one day they would share something with each other that didn’t extend to Harry.

He had friends; he had family. But he only had the _devotion_ of one person.

The same person who harbored a fervent desire to kill him. The same person who had murdered the two people who could have ever cared for Harry just as deeply, the people who watched him soar around the house in Godric’s Hollow with shining eyes.

Wrinkling his nose, Harry rolled out of Voldemort’s arms and crouched on his hands and knees. He wondered whether he had the strength to stand. He thought he could, so he rose slowly, cautiously, until he was blinking around at the same forest in which he’d collapsed shortly after fleeing from the Scamanders.

The Scamanders. Harry looked at Voldemort’s hands for signs of carnage. “Did you hurt anyone before you found me?”

Voldemort looked exasperated. “Not irreversibly.”

Harry had more questions in that vein—are you _going_ to hurt anyone? But, of course he planned to hurt people. He was Voldemort. And Harry was so weak and half-awake he couldn’t find the energy to do anything but blink and breathe for a moment.

When he could speak, he said, “I wonder how long I’ve been…?”

“Only a few hours,” said Voldemort. “I returned at nearly the same moment from which I left, and you were pathetically easy to find.”

“Oh?” It seemed strange that he could be so weakened, so quickly, but then he remembered the feeling he’d had of _ending_ and shuddered. Somehow, he knew he was lucky to be alive at all.

Harry turned to find Voldemort still seated in the grass. His expression continued to shift from furious to dazed, as though their connection inspired similarly mercurial attitudes in him as in Harry. His hair was ruffled, half in his face. Harry had never seen him discomposed; it was fascinating. 

Voldemort’s legs were sprawled out, he was propped up on one arm; his robes were askew, revealing the shirt fitted closely over his broad but lean chest. The first few buttons were undone and revealed a bit of collarbone, a dusting of dark hair. Harry swallowed.

“The Time-Turner can go to 1996, can’t it?”

Voldemort nodded slowly. “I do not see why not.”

“But not without me,” Harry added, speaking very slowly, half-expecting Voldemort to attack. He had that cornered-wolf look in his eyes. When he didn’t move, Harry cleared his throat. “Do you know, then? That _I_ know?”

“What is it you think you know?”

“You think of me as your ‘Horcrux,’ and ‘your soul’? And it seems like they mean the same thing. And there are others—”

Voldemort leapt to his feet more quickly than Harry would have thought him capable. It was like watching an adder strike; he felt an instant of helpless dread, but couldn’t get out of the way in time.

He held Harry’s throat in one hand and calmly drew his wand with the other. Harry thought distantly that he didn’t seem to need his wand; Harry’s arms were already adhered to his sides as though bound, the violent heat of Voldemort’s magic strangely thrilling on Harry’s skin.

“I know you won’t kill me,” Harry said, or tried to. His voice came out more as a few faint gasps as Voldemort’s fingers closed so tightly his throat was too compressed for ordinary speech.

“I’ve told you, there are things I could do to you which would make you beg for death.”

But gazing back at him, Harry remembered something else from his time drifting along in Voldemort’s mind, magic, or both. It was one of the things he’d discovered there which was very obvious, but which he wasn’t sure Voldemort knew himself.

“You want me to be happy.”

Voldemort released him and was six feet away so quickly Harry landed hard and awkwardly on his left ankle and swore, thinking for a moment he’d turned it. When he had regained his balance, he looked at Voldemort cautiously. “You want me to like you,” he added stubbornly. 

Voldemort made a hissing noise and turned away, shoulders hunched protectively near his ears.

“You want me to love you.” 

This time Harry didn’t see it coming at all. One moment Voldemort had his back to him, and the next Harry was hearing the word _Crucio_ echo in his ears while his entire body strained against the impossible pain of the curse.

It didn’t last long; maybe only a second. Then it was over, leaving Harry’s fingers and toes pulsing with residual shock and his ears ringing. Voldemort was holding him again. He’d gathered Harry against him standing up, crushing Harry to his front, Voldemort’s robes bunched between them, his feet off the ground, Voldemort murmuring nonsense into his ear. When Harry’s flatlined thoughts stirred back to life and he could decipher Voldemort’s words, he caught amongst the little growls and sighs, “...I’ll find a way to kill you.”

Under even slightly normal circumstances, Harry would be fleeing, or reaching for his wand. After all, a short time ago he’d been desperate to get away from Voldemort, and expose him at any cost.

But he was still affected by whatever had happened when Voldemort went to 1981 without him. It wasn’t just the weakness, but all the reeling thoughts and feelings which had been deafening firsthand, and were easier sorted through in memory. With every passing thought Harry had the bizarre experience of _insight_ into Voldemort. Of _understanding_ him.

Harry’s right hand was pinned to his side by Voldemort’s embrace. But he managed to curve the left one around to tentatively pet Voldemort’s side. He’d never been good at comforting people, or touching them in general, but Voldemort’s voice fell silent and he trembled at Harry’s slightest touch.

“Maybe you will,” he said, voice slightly high and soft after gasping through the _Crucio_. “But maybe you won’t.”

They didn’t speak at all after that. Harry had not surrendered to the pleasure of the bond before, except to fall asleep under its influence. He wasn’t sleepy now. He was painfully aware of the delight his body had in being held against Voldemort’s, participating very little except for continuing to stroke Voldemort’s waist with gradually increasing confidence.

Then Harry pulled back far enough to peer up at Voldemort, whose eyes were half-lidded but intent on Harry’s face at once.

He almost asked, but he’d only half-formed the thought— _can we?—_ when Voldemort frowned, looking around them at the dark trees like he’d forgotten where they were. Then he pulled Harry close to side-along as he Disapparated.

****

Voldemort woke after Harry the following morning. He lay on his side, his calves tangled with Harry’s, robes wound uncomfortably around his waist and thigh. Harry was looking at Voldemort’s hand, which was splayed over his stomach. His head rested on Voldemort’s shoulder, his hair silky and oddly cool where it brushed Voldemort’s cheek.

“What now?”

It was the same question Voldemort had avoided since he found Harry in the forest, after that agonizing moment wherein he believed Harry was dead.

Time travel—what a strange thing it was. That a momentous journey could be undertaken at any time without delaying the arrival. How did one choose the moment to leave? 

Voldemort had felt the raw tension of being thrown involuntarily through time ever since he arrived. He’d been single-minded in solving the mystery of how to secure his Horcrux and determine how to go back. But now, with the Time-Turner in hand, he no longer felt the urgency.

The sense of patience, the need for stillness, also came from holding Harry. Cradling this deadly tumor, feeling the breath and beating heart of this lethal infection, this virus that drove him to delirium.

“Now,” Voldemort said, and his voice seemed to startle Harry, though he relaxed again as Voldemort smoothed his hair from his temple with his fingertips. “You have homework to do.” 

Harry sat up so he could look down at Voldemort, green eyes incredulous. “ _Homework_?”

“The more attention you draw to yourself, the more you risk the timeline. You need to continue to be a”—Voldemort frowned with distaste—“thoroughly average student.”

“‘Risk the timeline’?” Harry echoed, eyes narrowing. “So we…”

“Are in a stable loop,” Voldemort confirmed. Harry’s mouth dropped open a little.

“How is that even possible?” Harry insisted. “That would mean that _you_ would have remembered me, all along!”

Voldemort gazed back at him with a carefully blank face, because, of course, he _had_ remembered Harry. Voldemort watched confusion turn to shock on Harry’s face before he almost somersaulted off the bed in his haste to put distance between them.

“How is that possible?” Harry demanded hoarsely.

Now it was Voldemort’s turn to be surprised, though only faintly. He sat up cautiously. “Is it that unimaginable? Why do you think I was so quick to trust the prophecy? When I learned that one of the children to whom it could apply was _Harry Potter_? And that the boy I had known, who so closely resembled James Potter, was lost to history after 1943?”

Harry had pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and was visibly trembling.

“I didn’t remember all that much, though I strained to recall every detail. You were only at the school for a month at most. All I could remember was that you were not extraordinary in any way, thoroughly beneath my notice. And to discover that you had _time-traveled_ fifty years, to sleep in my Hogwarts dormitory, presumably as the Order’s spy…”

Harry made an incredulous noise. “That’s what you think?”

Voldemort folded his arms, annoyed. “No longer. I was there when we were transported from the Time Room, after all. It was obviously no more your intent than it was mine.”

“But you still tried to kill me, in 1981, the _first time_ ,” Harry said slowly. “Didn’t you know it was a waste of time? That it _couldn’t_ work, because I’d live at least to sixteen?”

Voldemort, restless, stepped out of the bed. “I never believed time was unchangeable.”

“But you do now?”

He glanced at Harry, who still looked pale and sick. Voldemort itched with the inane urge to go to him; to soothe him. The demands of the bond, he was sure.

“Yes.”

“So...this was how it always was,” Harry said nonsensically. “This had all...already happened.” 

“Apparently,” Voldemort muttered.

“If you’re worried about messing something up, shouldn’t we go back now?” When Voldemort looked at Harry, he could see how the thought of going back to 1996 tore him in two, with desperate longing and equal dread. That made sense to Voldemort. Harry had been pathetically homesick throughout their time here, but he must suppose—correctly—that Voldemort would spirit him away to safekeeping the instant they returned. He certainly couldn’t just return Harry to his friends, Hogwarts, and _Dumbledore._

“Soon, but not now,” Voldemort said dismissively.

Harry nodded, looking more miserable with every passing moment as the full weight of their circumstances seemed to descend on him. But he cleared his throat and asked in a small voice, “Are you going to hurt anyone who helped me leave the castle?”

Voldemort considered the question. The infuriating answer was, most likely, that he _couldn’t_ maim the long list of idiotic children who deserved it. Just as he hadn’t been able to cast the Killing Curse upon Andrews. But he couldn’t fully resign himself to that unacceptable impotency, let alone suggest it out loud.

He settled for a stern, “Not if you behave.” He recalled another pressing thought. “And we must decide how to explain where you’ve been.”

That turned out to be strangely easy. Slughorn hadn’t noticed Harry’s absence, and his dorm-mates curiously hadn’t reported it. Harry went to class, and then to his dorms, and though Voldemort hovered in his mind uneasily until he fell asleep, the other sixth-years didn’t so much as look at him askance, much less cause him distress.

The next morning, Harry came to Voldemort’s quarters as they had agreed, under cover of difficulties with his DADA homework. Voldemort hadn’t been sure how to invite contact for the bond, but in the end it didn’t matter. Harry came in and tucked himself under Voldemort’s arm with a sigh.

The week passed without event. Harry went to class and the dormitories and apparently avoided any Slytherin ire, as despite Voldemort’s near-constant checking in, no sense of panic or even unease traveled through their connection. 

And then, on Friday morning, Dumbledore returned from the war.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbelievably, we're almost at the end! If you feel like it, please let us know what you think about the chapter and what you are hoping for in the finale!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The last installment! 
> 
> Thank you to Cybrid and trashgoblinwizardparty for beta reading this chapter. <3

**Chapter 15.1 The Unlikely Compatibility of Persons with Dissimilar Character; or, opposites (eventually) attract.**

In the two days since he and Voldemort had rendezvoused in the forest, Harry found himself in a detached state. He was oddly focused on his studies and homework, though when he had a thought that seemed too insightful, or realized he was about to earn a perfect score, he went back and made revisions. Carefully keeping himself in the range of “thoroughly average,” that phrase that had been stuck in his mind since he’d heard Voldemort say it.

(He shouldn’t care what Voldemort thought, but it rankled, to be perceived that way. Harry was aware of his own hypocrisy, since he’d always insisted to everyone he was nothing special—just Harry. Why should he care if the one person to finally see him that way was Voldemort?)

But, still, he put extra effort into his DADA essay. Practical work was always his strength, rather than written, even in the class that had always been his best. But in the frame of mind he’d fallen into, it wasn’t difficult to bring together the various ideas from the reading and unite them to address the assigned topic. It also left him feeling strangely satisfied—proud, he supposed. If this was how Hermione felt all the time, he almost understood how she could be so devoted to her schoolwork.

The question of what was going to happen to him, and to Voldemort, and to everyone he loved when they returned together to 1996, hung over him. But Harry began to think of it like the sun. It was too powerful and painful a concept to be confronted full-on. If he looked at it directly, it might blind him. So he didn’t look at it at all. It was easiest to focus on immediate, trivial things. Unimportant coursework, tasteless food, staring at his bed-curtains for hours until he finally fell into uneasy sleep.

His dreams were restless. They vividly revisited his time in Voldemort’s head, to confusing effect. Harry swam in memories and feelings and intricate plans and machinations as detailed as blueprints. He felt like years of his life were compressed into one night’s sleep. He woke feeling more tired than when he’d lain down, and nauseous too.

On Wednesday, the feeling was so intense that Harry was sick, as quietly as possible, over the side of his bed. Somehow, he didn’t wake anyone in the dark dormitory, and he hastily Vanished the mess.

He went to Voldemort’s office, as he had the past two mornings. They embraced without speaking, and Harry thought, distantly, that it would be better if they only held hands, because the thrill Harry felt at being pressed close to Voldemort’s body was almost overshadowed by a dark well of loathing for them both. 

He almost told Voldemort about the intense, wandering dreams that he wasn’t sure were just dreams. But the silence that had descended between them for the past few days was too difficult to break. 

At breakfast, Harry sat alone at the Slytherin table as had become his custom, though he did nod and smile at Oswin when their eyes met across the room. Oswin had already been back at the school by the time Harry and Voldemort returned, and he caught Harry in the corridor the following morning to halfheartedly scold him for leaving the tent in secret.

Ultimately, though, Oswin wasn’t the sort for sustained anger. He trailed off from his lecture and simply hugged Harry, tightly, while obviously trying not to cry.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he’d sniffed.

The other person who gave Harry an almost-friendly welcome was Marigold. They passed in the corridors and she caught Harry’s eye, but she was busy pretending to listen attentively to Walburga along with a few other witches. They went past without any of the rest acknowledging Harry, Walburga having lost interest in manipulating him as soon as it became clear that Riddle planned to ignore Harry indefinitely.

Tom Riddle. The only figure that threatened Harry’s persistent calm. But though he was on edge when Riddle and the other sixth-year boys came into any room, they continued to behave as though Harry didn’t exist, and based upon Voldemort’s revelation, Harry hoped things would stay that way.

There was another subject that Harry could hardly find the strength to contemplate. Voldemort knowing, all along. Voldemort _remembering_. Harry shied from wondering outright what Voldemort remembered. If he remembered touching Harry in the bathroom, and struggling with the question of whether Harry _wanted_ him to remember it.

“Mr. Potter!” said Professor Dumbledore, catching Harry leaving the Great Hall. It was surreal, to have risked everything to find the Professor only a few short days ago. And now he’d come to Harry, and Harry could hardly bring himself to be glad. “I’m told you were looking for me over the weekend.”

“I…” Harry paused and worried his lip. Professor Dumbledore looked around them at the trickle of students coming and going through the corridor, and guided Harry to an alcove under the staircase and lowered his voice.

“I suppose the limits on conversation between a time traveler and a man in his past are imposing themselves?”

It wasn’t the reason, exactly, but it sufficed. Harry gazed up at him and put his hands in his pockets.

Dumbledore stroked his beard. He looked pensive and, when he fell silent and held still as he did now, Harry could see that he was very weary. Maybe more so, even, than Harry recalled at the heights of the war in his own time. Then, the Headmaster was often grave but always stoic, somehow unyielding. Harry missed that version of him.

“I’ll be going soon, I reckon,” Harry said to fill the silence, speaking slowly and half-expecting the magic to intervene and replace what he planned to say with something else entirely.

Professor Dumbledore nodded, fixing his attention on Harry once more. “In that case, I should tell you now, lest I miss my opportunity. I know the fragility of time, Harry. You don’t have to worry—I’ll safeguard the future for you as best I can. Those who will remember you—and don’t share my opinion on the sanctity of timelines—can be kept from the staff. And when we meet again, I’ll do my best to convince you it’s the first time.”

Harry hadn’t felt the need to extract any of these promises from him, and now that he had, he was reeling a bit at their implications. But before he could say anything, the Professor went on.

“And I must thank you, Harry. Just your presence here—knowing that you _know me_ , and that we met when you were a student at a _future_ Hogwarts—well, it’s lent me a courage I thought I couldn’t find. The courage to do something which I had come to fear I was incapable.”

He spoke of Grindelwald, Harry realized with dismay.

Professor Dumbledore’s eyes were warm and steady, but now Harry recognized a deep malaise there he had never understood before. Now, he understood it better than he wanted to.

The force that had been with Harry ever since the Time Room tickled his throat in warning. So Harry just smiled and nodded, saying nothing, just to be safe.

* * *

That night the dream changed. From the unfocused, incomprehensible wandering between thought and memory, Harry was pitched directly into a single, vivid scene. He was in a version of his own body—a taller, slightly broader and stronger version—and he was with Voldemort.

Voldemort’s hair was braided, and he was mincing an onion with a small knife, while Harry perched beside him on the counter, his head bent to watch. There was a sliced lemon on the cutting board.

Voldemort glanced up at him with a halfhearted scowl. “This would be so painless with magic. There are a thousand spells for cooking.”

Harry blinked. He couldn’t argue…? But Voldemort was already back to his task, muttering. 

“I know you say it affects the taste, but this is ridiculous. What now?”

He leaned away from the counter, balancing himself with a hand on Harry’s thigh, an unconscious familiarity. Harry went totally tense, and his breath hitched. Voldemort, misinterpreting, looked at him sharply.

“Oh?” His hand slipped higher, inquiring.

“Er,” Harry managed, cheeks flaming, and looked away. He happened to turn toward the stove, and Voldemort misinterpreted _again_ with a sigh. His touch fell away and he carried the cutting board to the stove, where butter was just getting brown in a skillet, next to a plate of thin-sliced chicken breasts already dredged in flour.

Harry realized what they were making, and the knowledge comforted him. He cleared his throat. “Sauté the onions, and when they’re translucent, add a little wine to deglaze the pan.” He remembered the page, spotted by grease, in Aunt Petunia’s _Italian Classics_ cookbook. 

Fragrant steam rose from the pan and colored Voldemort’s cheeks. Memories stole over Harry, as though he’d lived decades in this alternate reality rather than being dropped into it. The first time Harry cooked something complex for the two of them, Voldemort hovered over his shoulder and asked so many tedious questions, Harry had at last turned to him in frustration and thrust the mixing bowl and whisk into his hands. _You do it_ , he’d suggested, without ire.

Now it was a new, pseudo-tradition. Harry secretly loved it, that they had things they did together without having to make a specific plan. That Voldemort would grumble but abstain from magic. 

When Voldemort made a tiny sound of distress and turned with three scalded finger tips held out, Harry slid off the counter without thinking. He was moved by these memories, and the insistent thought that he had to be dreaming. A strange, domestic dream.

He took Voldemort by the wrist and inspected the three red digits while Voldemort muttered, “ _This_ is why we should use _magic._ ”

“Don’t be a baby,” Harry murmured. The skin of Voldemort’s fingertips was dark pink with only the slightest signs of swelling. Barely scalded, it hardly even warranted a spell. But Harry felt inexplicably distressed by even this slight imperfection, so he drew his wand and healed them, one at a time. Only after it was done did he realize he’d just cast a spell wordlessly. It must be one he’d learned only in the dream.

When he was done, Harry looked up at Voldemort. His face was arrested into perfect stillness, his eyes half-lidded. His fingers smelled strongly of onion and his soft breathing stirred Harry’s fringe, he stood so close.

“Put a stasis spell on that,” he told Harry lowly. Harry let go of Voldemort’s wrist and pointed his wand at the stove. A moment later, Voldemort had his hands on Harry’s hips, walking him backwards until the small of his back hit the counter.

Harry froze. Their eyes locked. This time Voldemort didn’t press past Harry’s hesitation. Instead, he frowned and his touch became more gentle, hesitant, though he still slipped his hands under the hem of Harry’s shirt to slide his palms around his bare waist.

“We don’t have to…” Voldemort began. Harry, though, was curious. And what was a dream for, if not indulging curiosity? He tamped down his panic and leaned a hesitant hand against Voldemort’s chest, the other on his shoulder, and kissed him.

It was a soft, questing kiss. Voldemort returned it, just as softly. Then he drew back, startled recognition on his face at last.

“Is this...are you... _him_?”

Harry’s heart stuttered. He was hard and the coarse denim of his jeans was painful on his skin. The image of Tom Riddle’s sneer was flashing behind his eyes. The kitchen smelled of lemons and browned butter, and the bite of the onion was still on the back of his tongue.

He wasn’t really dreaming. _He wasn’t really dreaming._

He shoved Voldemort hard and twisted away from him, suddenly, unbearably claustrophobic, and put several feet between them. They regarded one another across the kitchen. It was a simple, old-fashioned kitchen. The kitchen where, a wave of memory reminded Harry, they’d passed so many similar evenings before. Gradually trusting one another more. Voldemort no longer bothering to deny, in action or gesture, the open secret between them: that he wanted to fuck Harry. And Harry eventually admitting that he wanted to be fucked. 

Then, a thousand occasions where they did exactly that. Gently but somehow, also, fiercely, until it was rare for Harry to seize up and panic. Then the intensity changed, too. Voldemort once shoved Harry up against the wall, face-first, in the middle of a fight, and fucked him just like that, Harry’s cock grinding painfully into the wainscoting. Another time, absurdly slow, Voldemort using his mouth and his forefinger to drive Harry to the edge a half-dozen times until he was so desperate for Voldemort’s cock he climbed onto him and rode him.

Voldemort liked to mark him, and Harry’s favorite place was just beneath his ears, in the hollow behind his jaw. Voldemort liked it when Harry was noisy, and especially if he begged. If Voldemort was too smug and composed, Harry could undo him with just a little begging. Sometimes no more than a quiet, “please.”

Harry wanted it even now, he thought ashamedly, but also with wonder. He’d suspected that he’d been damaged, somehow, by that first experience with Tom Riddle. But now he saw that wasn’t the case, though it was a bitter disappointment to think the best he could ever hope for in that kind of human connection was _Voldemort_.

“When it was me, I didn’t stay long,” Voldemort said quietly. “It will pass. Just breathe.” He leaned back against the wall, his hands tucked behind him.

Harry wheezed obediently. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath.

“In and out,” Voldemort said softly. Harry felt, as he calmed down, that in fact he was _going_ , somehow. With a lurching feeling like a Portkey. He stared back at Voldemort like his vibrant eyes were an anchor. The last thing he heard Voldemort say before he was spinning through emptiness was, “It will all be okay.”

* * *

Harry awoke in Voldemort’s arms. It was strangely similar to the experience in the forest, except that Voldemort had apparently extracted him from his dormitory, hopefully without alerting anyone to his presence. Also, Voldemort was not sitting with Harry in his lap, but rather standing with Harry cradled in his arms, which felt worse, somehow. Harry fidgeted and elbowed him until Voldemort put him down.

“What happened?”

They were in the hall outside Voldemort’s quarters, so Voldemort gave him a quick, silencing glare, then opened the door and ushered Harry inside. As Harry passed, Voldemort touched the back of his neck, then the small of his back, almost as though he couldn’t help himself.

“I don’t know,” Voldemort said. 

Harry was so surprised to hear a straightforward statement of ignorance from Voldemort, he was speechless for a moment.

“I had a dream,” Harry said slowly, recalling it in all its staggering intensity. “But I don’t think it was a dream.”

Voldemort nodded, closing the door and brushing past Harry. “I’ve been having them too.”

“Oh.”

Voldemort avoided Harry’s eye as he busied himself with the Potions cabinet mounted on the wall outside the bathroom door. 

Harry was blushing, which didn’t make sense. Harry dug his fingernails into his wrist to distract himself.

“I believe they are visions of another time,” Voldemort went on, turning with a vial of something pale pink and steaming in his right hand. “Drink this.”

Harry recoiled as Voldemort advanced, catching a sour, chemical scent wafting from the potion. “No,” he said automatically.

Voldemort finally met his eye, but only to glare. “Yes,” he countered, and thrust the Potion toward Harry so its contents sloshed threateningly.

Harry took the vial but didn’t drink it immediately. “What is it?”

“Essential nutrients, mostly,” Voldemort said, “but for your magic, rather than your body. It will help.”

“How would you know what will help?” Harry insisted. He flushed as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He hadn’t pushed Voldemort like this since before Voldemort had taken out his frustrations on Andrews’ arm. The memory of the dream—the future, if that’s really what it was—must be affecting him. _That_ version of Harry had no scruples in needling Voldemort. He thought it was _fun_.

“I’ve been having my own...visions, you could say,” Voldemort said, surprising Harry with his candor. Feeling oddly like he owed Voldemort something in return for it, Harry drank the Potion.

It _did_ help.

“You’ve seen...us?” Harry looked down, his blush returning, even as his mind and magic leveled and felt mostly restored. It was an impressive potion.

“Yes,” Voldemort said.

“Why is it happening?”

“I don’t know that, either, but Andrews might.”

Harry looked up, startled, as Voldemort went to the door that led to his office. Harry followed. Voldemort left the adjoining door open, pointing his wand at the trunk.

“Why would Andrews know…?” Harry started to ask, but fell silent as the man himself was Levitated out of the trunk. He appeared to have been asleep, and startled violently when he awoke in midair. Voldemort, of course, was unapologetic. He dropped Andrews to the floor and then a swift _Incarcerous_ bound his wrists and ankles. He glared halfheartedly up at Voldemort, then his still-drowsy gaze took in Harry, and rancor was replaced by surprise.

“We have a few new questions to ask,” Voldemort said pleasantly. “But first,” he added, turning to address Harry, “I should explain that Andrews is not an Auror, but rather an Unspeakable posing as one. And he seems to know quite a bit about our presence here, and the ways in which Time can misbehave.”

Harry turned his stare on Andrews, who looked regretfully back at him, but didn’t deny Voldemort’s statement.

“I didn’t enjoy misleading you, Harry, but I hope you’ll understand one day that I was only playing my role.”

Harry couldn’t think of what to say, and anyway, Voldemort was turning to Andrews again, his wand lively in his fingertips.

“Why might my—and Harry’s—minds, but not our bodies, be roaming into the future?”

Andrews seemed unsurprised. He also was having difficulty looking away from Voldemort’s wand, as though he expected it to do violence at any moment. Harry supposed that paranoia was understandable.

“It will only get worse, the longer you remain out of the time where you belong,” he said quietly.

Voldemort growled, and his wand went still in abrupt readiness. Andrews blanched and looked away. Without pausing to think about what he was doing, Harry closed the distance between himself and Voldemort in two short steps and put his hand on Voldemort’s right forearm. Immediately, Voldemort’s grip on his wand relaxed, and a measure of tension flowed out of him.

He didn’t look at Harry, or shake off his touch.

“It irritates me to think,” Voldemort said slowly, while Andrews continued to cringe, “that you have not been forthcoming with all that you know.”

“There isn’t much more,” he murmured, speaking fast. “But I’ve said I won’t resist Legilimency. I have nothing left to conceal.”

Voldemort sighed, finally looking over, but not at Harry. Only at the place on his arm where Harry’s hand still rested.

“I suppose,” he said quietly, obviously no longer speaking to Andrews, “that there is no purpose in further delay.”

Harry wasn’t sure whether to feel eagerness or dread. “What are you going to do when we get back?” He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Will you...will you agree to…”

Voldemort didn’t interrupt, or jerk away. He said nothing and did nothing; he was waiting, Harry realized, for Harry to ask what he would.

It wasn’t a promise of acceptance, but it was an indicator of their indescribable closeness. The bond, the knowledge of their future, the bizarre intricacies of their past, shared in ways that neither of them had known it to be until now.

As Harry paused and Voldemort _waited_ , Harry was struck all at once by a realization that felt so impossible, he could have laughed. He’d first stumbled upon it in the forest, and he’d told Voldemort as much: _you want me to love you._ It was still true, but there was more to it, which Harry had missed before.

Even more than Harry had no one as close to him as Voldemort, Voldemort had no one as close to him as Harry. Voldemort had _never_ had anyone truly close to him. Their connection gave Voldemort a strange power over Harry, but Harry—Harry’s power over Voldemort was stronger yet.

It was like realizing that a raging storm, or a violent dragon, or an angry troll, was actually on a leash, with Harry at its other end. Not a particularly strong leash, but at least it gave him the definite ability to tug.

“Will you agree not to hurt anyone?”

Voldemort’s stare didn’t waver, except that he lifted a brow.

“I know what you’re thinking, but…” Harry’s has steeled and he went on with more force. “That can’t work. You can’t have a war, not like that. Not with me.” Somehow, Harry said that last without stuttering or wincing. His hand fell from Voldemort’s arm. He was surprised by himself.

“We’ll see,” Voldemort said.

Harry thought of the future. How those glimpses were a _proof_ of some kind. Just as Harry’s mere presence, future student of Headmaster Dumbledore, told Dumbledore he’d prevail against Grindelwald, seeing himself in a...oh, god. In a _relationship_ with Voldemort told Harry Voldemort, too, could change.

“Okay,” said Harry, then blurted before he could overthink it—“But—please.”

Voldemort’s gaze snapped to Harry’s, bright and burning. He didn’t say anything, but Harry felt his response, viscerally. Further proof that the dream was more than just fantasy.

* * *

Alaned Malfoy waited for them with visible trepidation. He must have read some of the emotions that Voldemort couldn’t help radiating. He wanted to dissect the stupid creature, but didn’t have to list the consequences to know they outweighed the potential satisfaction.

“My Lord,” said Alaned. His gaze roved over Harry, then, with almost more interest. Voldemort was annoyed, but couldn’t claim not to empathize. “Mr. Potter.”

Harry smiled with reflexive politeness, but didn’t speak. 

They saw no one. Voldemort had to admire Alaned’s ability to clear the Ministry corridors on fairly short notice. After the lift, and the black hallway, they entered the Time Room, still mostly vacant except a scattering of softly ticking clocks. Harry looked around with obvious unease.

“From the dais. You’ll both need to touch the Time-Turner.”

Harry and Voldemort stepped onto the platform and Voldemort drew out the device. It had only just reset.

Harry stepped closer, startling Voldemort. But then he, too, recalled the panic that had seized him in his most recent trip in time. It was instinctive, and made worse by isolation. Not sure how the boy would react, he took Harry’s hand. Harry’s fingers jerked subtly, but then he relaxed and let Voldemort weave their fingers together.

“If we input the date from which we departed?” Voldemort asked Alaned.

“You’ll arrive in the midst of the battle, just as you left.”

Harry looked pained. In his dreams of Harry, Voldemort had come to know him well enough that he understood what he was feeling. It mystified Voldemort that Harry could care so deeply for so many people, some of whom he barely knew at all, but Harry was who Harry was.

“Have you thought about what I asked you?”

Voldemort nodded. “Yes. I agree that I will do nothing until you and I reach an understanding, or until we determine that an understanding is impossible.”

Harry’s eyes were wide with shock. “Really?”

“When we arrive, I’ll go at once, and take my Death-Eaters with me,” he said. “There may be injuries, still, but your side won’t be defeated, for now.”

Harry only stared.

“Nothing to say?” Voldemort’s grip tightened on Harry’s hand, and the boy jumped and looked down at their intertwined fingers like he’d forgotten they were touching.

“Um,” Harry said, looking half-ill. “If you mean it...then, I guess...thanks.”

Now Voldemort felt uneasy. He looked away. “Ready, then?” He held the Time-Turner out in front of them. In answer, Harry lifted his free hand and rested it next to Voldemort’s on the device.

Voldemort turned the dials, and the Time-Turner vibrated furiously for one long moment before it yanked them back to their present.

* * *

The spinning world resolved itself. The bell jar shattered while a reverberation of magic, force, and scattered time passed over everyone in the room in a wave. 

Voldemort felt a burst of unfamiliar memory in his mind. Flowers and rainfall. The prick of a thorn. Then it was over; the ricochet off the bell jar passed. Voldemort saw a trio of his supporters charging into the room, see him, and freeze.

Voldemort still held Harry’s hand. And Voldemort was—well, not at all the version of himself that had been in the room a moment before.

“Harry…!” Voldemort heard a boy cry. He turned to see the pale freckled face he’d spent enough time with Harry’s memories to know belonged to Ron Weasley.

Harry was trying to pull free, but Voldemort tightened his grip.

Harry looked up, eyes narrowed.

“You said…!”

“I said I’d go,” Voldemort agreed, jerking Harry closer. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take you with me.”

“You said we’d _agree_ ,” Harry hissed.

“And we will,” Voldemort said. “Unless we can’t.” He raised his wand and deflected a curse easily, barely distracted. “The longer we linger the more likely someone is to be hurt, Harry.”

Harry swallowed visibly, his eyes wet with angry tears as he stared back at his friends. Hermione Granger was half-restraining Weasley from launching himself their way, his wand high in a shaking fist.

“I... _hate you._ ” 

A butterfly hovered near Harry’s left eye, its wings a blur, its body as smooth and bright as a jewel. Freed from its eternal loop, it darted toward the ceiling in the moment Voldemort Disapparated.

* * *

**Chapter 15.3**

**A Glimpse of the World at a Much Later Date; or, a time skip.**

Halfway through her last class of the day, Minerva could hardly focus on the students. Fortunately they were sixth-years and therefore unlikely to do any real harm under less-than-thorough supervision.

An errant burst of flames startled her. She reconsidered her good opinion of sixth-years and fixed the guilty student with an unimpressed look.

“Mr. Patil,” she murmured, and he looked pale. Minerva had never needed to be loud in order to be scathing. 

“It was Hugo,” advised someone in the front row.

Hugo Weasley gasped at the betrayal, and looked utterly guilty when Minerva directed her attention to him in turn. Explicit confessions weren’t necessary.

“Private revision on Sunday,” she declared. “Now, wands away and refer to page eleven hundred and twelve. Who can tell me why fire is a common unintended element in the Transfiguration of animals that lay eggs?”

At last, the class ended and Minerva barely kept herself from shoving the stragglers out the door.

Then, she made her way to the Headmaster’s office. As a cat.

Minerva had never completely outgrown her inclination to eavesdrop, but in the years since her girlhood she’d learned to rein it in. Still, as soon as she saw the door open in the hall, she darted inside before it could fall closed, up the stairs and straight beneath a chair in a far corner of the room.

She listened attentively as Dumbledore and the applicant exchanged pleasantries, her ears quivering at the not-quite-familiar voice. It _was_ Harry, the very same boy she’d first met when she was thirteen and he was sixteen, and again when she was fifty-one and he wasn’t even two. Harry had been the single-most disconcerting thing in her life, and also one of the most wonderful. If, after all this time, he truly was _here_ , and _well_ , a great weight would leave her shoulders at last. 

“It’s been a long while since we last saw you, Harry,” murmured the Headmaster.

“Yes,” said the middle-aged man across the desk. Minerva’s cat could only make out the dark, rather long and unkempt, hair on the back of his head, the set of his shoulders. But though he was tense, he seemed pleased to be there. “How have things been, here at Hogwarts?” 

“Very well,” Albus said warmly. “We have better attendance than we have in a hundred years, thanks to the implementation of the curriculum for Squibs.” 

“I’m happy to hear that.” 

“Well, the charmingly untidy handwriting in the letter making the suggestion was rather familiar, so you’ll forgive me for deducing that the program was your idea?” 

“I just thought…” The younger wizard shrugged, trailing off. He looked around the room, so that Minerva briefly saw his face in profile. He couldn’t be said to resemble James Potter, particularly, any longer. Though maybe that was only because the world had never seen James Potter in the full bloom of adulthood. When he died at twenty-one, he still had a definite boyishness. 

“I suppose I thought it would be a good thing. I have had a lot of time, and little to do with it, except think.”

He didn’t sound forlorn, bitter, or tormented. He was at-ease with himself, warm but matter-of-fact. Dumbledore seemed pleased by the answer.

“We would very much like to occupy your time, if you’re willing to join our staff.” 

Harry—it really had to be—laughed. “For a year, at least?” 

“Well,” Dumbledore said, a shadow falling over his face briefly, though he shook it off with a smile. “I have reason to believe you may be immune to our inconvenient ‘curse’ on the position, as a matter of fact.” 

The cat was distracted by an insect scurrying into the shadows beneath the chair, and it took all Minerva’s human focus to keep herself still. By the time she was properly paying attention again, the wizards were standing and clasping hands.

“I can show myself out,” said Harry. “I remember the way.”

Albus nodded, and when the door closed behind Harry, he called pointedly: “Hello, Minerva.” 

Minerva refused to be embarrassed, but she did come out from beneath the chair, shook the dust from her fur, and returned to human form. “Hello, Albus,” she said, taking the chair that had just been vacated. “How did it go?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Albus frowned thoughtfully. “It went very well,” he said. They smiled at one another as he returned to his chair and steepled his fingers. “ _He_ is very well.”

A breath she’d been holding for decades escaped her. “And he accepted?”

“Provisionally,” said Dumbledore. He reached beneath the desk and produced a bottle of Firewhiskey and Minerva conjured two glasses.

“Excellent,” she said, her face strained by the unfamiliar feeling of a very wide smile. “Most excellent.”

**Chapter 15.4 The Senseless Act of Defying Gravity for Recreational Purposes; or, flight.**

“Harry. You aren’t listening.”

Harry scowled on principle, but Voldemort wasn’t actually wrong. He’d been staring off into the middle distance, which from this high, was the point where the sheet of clouds over their heads trailed off to a ragged edge, the gentle breeze breaking it up like a stream at a sandbar.

Now, he found Voldemort hovering in midair before him with his arms folded, looking put-out. Nothing hurt his feelings like being ignored. Voldemort’s injured pride could be a dangerous thing, but it had been years since they first reached their uneasy understanding. Harry had come to enjoy nudging Voldemort outside his comfort zone. Harry thought it was good for him.

Harry looked over with exaggerated patience, balancing easily on his broom. The Firebolt was about a decade out of date at this point, but Harry didn’t care. He planned to use it until it fell apart, and from what he could tell, it performed just as well as the newer models anyway.

Voldemort, of course, wasn’t seated on a broomstick at all. He was drifting along next to Harry like some kind of corporeal ghost, and while Harry had always been a little unnerved by the sight of Voldemort’s kind of flight, he did want to learn how it was done. So he listened attentively as Voldemort went down the list a third time.

“Don’t look down. Don’t lock your knees. Don’t hold your breath. And know that it’s possible.”

Harry nodded, slowly swinging his leg over the broom so that he sat on it like a swing or a very narrow bench, and it tilted alarmingly for a moment before Voldemort reached out to steady it. He turned so that he was directly in front of Harry, and Harry sat in the bracket of his arms.

Harry looked up in surprise, finding their faces close. It had been a condition for years that they only touched hands to satisfy the bond. But it had also been years since a response to Voldemort that traveled to Harry’s cock had made him unhinged with confused despair. Perhaps the rules could be revisited, Harry thought hazily, but not while they were much closer to the clouds than the ground.

Voldemort cleared his throat and pulled away. “Go ahead,” he said gruffly.

Harry slid off the broomstick. He didn’t look down—or up—but rather continued to gaze at Voldemort, who was evidence of this and so many other wonderful, awful possibilities. He didn’t fall, even as the broomstick drifted out of range of his fingertips. He was flying, feather-light, and Voldemort’s smile was as vivid as sunlight.

“Good boy,” he murmured, so low it was almost lost in the brisk breeze that continued to weave between them. But Harry heard, and shuddered pleasantly. The air came up in a buoyant cushion and pressed him higher, and Voldemort let him rise, reaching out to seize the drifting broomstick for safekeeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working together on this collaboration has been so incredibly amazing and we've both enjoyed it so much, and want to thank you, readers, for sticking with us till the end. We hope you like it! <3
> 
> If you're interested in reading our next project, which is totally unlike this one (except that we're writing it!) you can see it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305237/chapters/43327073). <3


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